Virtual Barriers in Augmented Reality for Safe and Effective Human-Robot Cooperation in Manufacturing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a virtual barrier system using augmented reality to enhance safety and efficiency in human-robot collaboration during manufacturing tasks, with real-time path re-planning and intuitive controls.

Contribution

It presents a novel AR-based virtual barrier system with dynamic safety zones and an intuitive robot programming interface, improving safety and task performance.

Findings

Increased user safety perception

Enhanced task efficiency

More intuitive human-robot interaction

Abstract

Safety is a fundamental requirement in any human-robot collaboration scenario. To ensure the safety of users for such scenarios, we propose a novel Virtual Barrier system facilitated by an augmented reality interface. Our system provides two kinds of Virtual Barriers to ensure safety: 1) a Virtual Person Barrier which encapsulates and follows the user to protect them from colliding with the robot, and 2) Virtual Obstacle Barriers which users can spawn to protect objects or regions that the robot should not enter. To enable effective human-robot collaboration, our system includes an intuitive robot programming interface utilizing speech commands and hand gestures, and features the capability of automatic path re-planning when potential collisions are detected as a result of a barrier intersecting the robot's planned path. We compared our novel system with a standard 2D display interface through a user study, where participants performed a task mimicking an industrial manufacturing procedure. Results show that our system increases the user's sense of safety and task efficiency, and makes the interaction more intuitive.