Towards Safe Multi-Level Human-Robot Interaction in Industrial Tasks

TL;DR

This paper presents a multi-level safety framework for industrial human-robot collaboration, integrating vision, contact, and intention-based modules to enhance safety and interaction flexibility.

Contribution

It introduces three independent safety modules for different interaction modes and discusses their integration for safe, flexible human-robot collaboration.

Findings

Developed vision-based safety monitoring that pauses robots when humans are nearby.

Implemented contact-based safety that halts robots upon unexpected contact.

Designed hierarchical intention tracking to maintain safe distances and enable compliant modes.

Abstract

Multiple levels of safety measures are required by multiple interaction modes which collaborative robots need to perform industrial tasks with human co-workers. We develop three independent modules to account for safety in different types of human-robot interaction: vision-based safety monitoring pauses robot when human is present in a shared space; contact-based safety monitoring pauses robot when unexpected contact happens between human and robot; hierarchical intention tracking keeps robot in a safe distance from human when human and robot work independently, and switches robot to compliant mode when human intends to guide robot. We discuss the prospect of future research in development and integration of multi-level safety modules. We focus on how to provide safety guarantees for collaborative robot solutions with human behavior modeling.