AirTouch: Towards Safe Human-Robot Interaction Using Air Pressure Feedback and IR Mocap System

TL;DR

This paper introduces AirTouch, a safety system for human-robot interaction that uses IR-based human detection and airflow barriers to prevent unsafe proximity, demonstrated through experiments showing improved safety distances.

Contribution

The novel integration of IR motion capture with airflow-based physical barriers provides a new approach to ensuring safety in human-robot interactions.

Findings

AirTouch significantly improves safety distance maintenance.

The airflow barrier effectively guides humans away from robots.

The system performs reliably in real-time scenarios.

Abstract

The growing use of robots in urban environments has raised concerns about potential safety hazards, especially in public spaces where humans and robots may interact. In this paper, we present a system for safe human-robot interaction that combines an infrared (IR) camera with a wearable marker and airflow potential field. IR cameras enable real-time detection and tracking of humans in challenging environments, while controlled airflow creates a physical barrier that guides humans away from dangerous proximity to robots without the need for wearable devices. A preliminary experiment was conducted to measure the accuracy of the perception of safety barriers rendered by controlled air pressure. In a second experiment, we evaluated our approach in an imitation scenario of an interaction between an inattentive person and an autonomous robotic system. Experimental results show that the proposed system significantly improves a participant's ability to maintain a safe distance from the operating robot compared to trials without the system.