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Ensuring safety in human-robot coexisting environment based on two-level protection

Ping Zhang (South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China)
Peigen Jin (South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China)
Guanglong Du (South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China)
Xin Liu (South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China)

Industrial Robot

ISSN: 0143-991x

Article publication date: 16 May 2016

634

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide a novel methodology based on two-level protection for ensuring safety of the moving human who enters the robot’s workspace, which is significant for dealing with the problem of human security in a human-robot coexisting environment.

Design/methodology/approach

In this system, anyone who enters the robot’s working space is detected by using the Kinect and their skeletons are calculated by the interval Kalman filter in real time. The first-level protection is mainly based on the prediction of the human motion, which used Gaussian mixture model and Gaussian Mixture Regression. However, even in cases where the prediction of human motion is incorrect, the system can still safeguard the human by enlarging the initial bounding volume of the human as the second-level early warning areas. Finally, an artificial potential field with some additional avoidance strategies is used to plan a path for a robot manipulator.

Findings

Experimental studies on the GOOGOL GRB3016 robot show that the robot manipulator can accomplish the predetermined tasks by circumventing the human, and the human does not feel dangerous.

Originality/value

This study presented a new framework for ensuring human security in a human-robot coexisting environment, and thus can improve the reliability of human-robot cooperation.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Project funded by the “National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No: 61403145)”, “Guangdong Provincial Science and Technology Project (2014B090921007)”, “Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Program (20150810068)” and Haizhu District of Guangzhou City Science and Technology Project (2014-cg-02).

Citation

Zhang, P., Jin, P., Du, G. and Liu, X. (2016), "Ensuring safety in human-robot coexisting environment based on two-level protection", Industrial Robot, Vol. 43 No. 3, pp. 264-273. https://doi.org/10.1108/IR-12-2015-0222

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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