Real-time Robot-assisted Ergonomics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a real-time human-robot interaction method that continuously monitors and adjusts robot movements to optimize human ergonomics during collaboration, validated through experimental studies.

Contribution

It presents a novel real-time protocol that detects ergonomic issues and adapts robot actions to maintain optimal human ergonomics in collaborative tasks.

Findings

Improved ergonomic posture during human-robot interaction

Effective real-time detection of ergonomic issues

Validated approach through experimental study

Abstract

This paper describes a novel approach in human robot interaction driven by ergonomics. With a clear focus on optimising ergonomics, the approach proposed here continuously observes a human user's posture and by invoking appropriate cooperative robot movements, the user's posture is, whenever required, brought back to an ergonomic optimum. Effectively, the new protocol optimises the human-robot relative position and orientation as a function of human ergonomics. An RGB-D camera is used to calculate and monitor human joint angles in real-time and to determine the current ergonomics state. A total of 6 main causes of low ergonomic states are identified, leading to 6 universal robot responses to allow the human to return to an optimal ergonomics state. The algorithmic framework identifies these 6 causes and controls the cooperating robot to always adapt the environment (e.g. change the pose of the workpiece) in a way that is ergonomically most comfortable for the interacting user. Hence, human-robot interaction is continuously re-evaluated optimizing ergonomics states. The approach is validated through an experimental study, based on established ergonomic methods and their adaptation for real-time application. The study confirms improved ergonomics using the new approach.