2,088 research outputs found
Online supervised global path planning for AMRs with human-obstacle avoidance
In smart factories, the performance of the production lines is improved thanks to the wide application of mobile robots. In workspaces where human operators and mobile robots coexist, safety is a fundamental factor to be considered. In this context, the motion planning of Autonomous Mobile Robots is a challenging task, since it must take into account the human factor. In this paper, an implementation of a three-level online path planning is proposed, in which a set of waypoints belonging to a safe path is computed by a supervisory planner. Depending on the nature of the detected obstacles during the robot motion, the re-computation of the safe path may be enabled, after the collision avoidance action provided by the local planner is initiated. Particular attention is devoted to the detection and avoidance of human operators. The supervisory planner is triggered as the detected human gets sufficiently close to the mobile robot, allowing it to follow a new safe virtual path while conservatively circumnavigating the operator. The proposed algorithm has been experimentally validated in a laboratory environment emulating industrial scenarios
Riistvarapaindlik ROSi tarkvarapakett tööstuslike robotite mööndlikuks juhtimiseks
Industrial robotics today is moving towards using lightweight collaborative robots to make it possible for small and medium sized enterprises to integrate robots in their manufacturing environment. However, there is still very few collaborative robots seen in the industry and the main reason is that programming of the robot is still too expensive and time-consuming, since there are too few ready solutions available today for controlling co-robots. The solution would be more available open source, maintainable, extendable and usable high-quality code for controlling co-robots. This thesis concentrates on developing such complete software bundle on ROS for compliant control for industrial collaborative manipulators
Human-Robot Collaboration for Kinesthetic Teaching
Recent industrial interest in producing smaller volumes of products in shorter time frames, in contrast to mass production in previous decades, motivated the introduction of human–robot collaboration (HRC) in industrial settings, as an attempt to increase flexibility in manufacturing applications by incorporating human intelligence and dexterity to these processes. This thesis presents methods for improving the involvement of human operators in industrial settings where robots are present, with a particular focus on kinesthetic teaching, i.e., manually guiding the robot to define or correct its motion, since it can facilitate non-expert robot programming.To increase flexibility in the manufacturing industry implies a loss of a fixed structure of the industrial environment, which increases the uncertainties in the shared workspace between humans and robots. Two methods have been proposed in this thesis to mitigate such uncertainty. First, null-space motion was used to increase the accuracy of kinesthetic teaching by reducing the joint static friction, or stiction, without altering the execution of the robotic task. This was possible since robots used in HRC, i.e., collaborative robots, are often designed with additional degrees of freedom (DOFs) for a greater dexterity. Second, to perform effective corrections of the motion of the robot through kinesthetic teaching in partially-unknown industrial environments, a fast identification of the source of robot–environment contact is necessary. Fast contact detection and classification methods in literature were evaluated, extended, and modified to use them in kinesthetic teaching applications for an assembly task. For this, collaborative robots that are made compliant with respect to their external forces/torques (as an active safety mechanism) were used, and only embedded sensors of the robot were considered.Moreover, safety is a major concern when robotic motion occurs in an inherently uncertain scenario, especially if humans are present. Therefore, an online variation of the compliant behavior of the robot during its manual guidance by a human operator was proposed to avoid undesired parts of the workspace of the robot. The proposed method used safety control barrier functions (SCBFs) that considered the rigid-body dynamics of the robot, and the method’s stability was guaranteed using a passivity-based energy-storage formulation that includes a strict Lyapunov function.All presented methods were tested experimentally on a real collaborative robot
GUARDIANS final report
Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for firefghters. The large dimensions together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The Guardians robot swarm is designed to assist fire fighters in searching a
large warehouse. In this report we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots searching and assisting fire fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms which provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we
discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also one of the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus the robot swarm is able to locate itself and provide guidance information to the humans. Together with
the re ghters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm based information to human beings
Robots learn to behave: improving human-robot collaboration in flexible manufacturing applications
L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen
The development of a human-robot interface for industrial collaborative system
Industrial robots have been identified as one of the most effective solutions for optimising output and quality within many industries. However, there are a number of manufacturing applications involving complex tasks and inconstant components which prohibit the use of fully automated solutions in the foreseeable future.
A breakthrough in robotic technologies and changes in safety legislations have supported the creation of robots that coexist and assist humans in industrial applications. It has been broadly recognised that human-robot collaborative systems would be a realistic solution as an advanced production system with wide range of applications and high economic impact. This type of system can utilise the best of both worlds, where the robot can perform simple tasks that require high repeatability while the human performs tasks that require judgement and dexterity of the human hands. Robots in such system will operate as “intelligent assistants”.
In a collaborative working environment, robot and human share the same working area, and interact with each other. This level of interface will require effective ways of communication and collaboration to avoid unwanted conflicts. This project aims to create a user interface for industrial collaborative robot system through integration of current robotic technologies. The robotic system is designed for seamless collaboration with a human in close proximity. The system is capable to communicate with the human via the exchange of gestures, as well as visual signal which operators can observe and comprehend at a glance.
The main objective of this PhD is to develop a Human-Robot Interface (HRI) for communication with an industrial collaborative robot during collaboration in proximity. The system is developed in conjunction with a small scale collaborative robot system which has been integrated using off-the-shelf components. The system should be capable of receiving input from the human user via an intuitive method as well as indicating its status to the user
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effectively. The HRI will be developed using a combination of hardware integrations and software developments. The software and the control framework were developed in a way that is applicable to other industrial robots in the future. The developed gesture command system is demonstrated on a heavy duty industrial robot
A Calibration Method for the Integrated Design of Finishing Robotic Workcells in the Aerospace Industry
Industrial robotics provides high flexibility and reconfigurability, cost effectiveness and user friendly programming for many applications but still lacks in accuracy. An effective workcell calibration reduces the errors in robotic manufacturing and contributes to extend the use of industrial robots to perform high quality finishing of complex parts in the aerospace industry. A novel workcell calibration method is embedded in an integrated design framework for an in-depth exploitation of CAD-based simulation and offline programming.
The method is composed of two steps: a first offline calibration of the workpiece-independent elements in the workcell layout and a final automated online calibration of workpiece-dependent elements. The method is finally applied to a robotic workcell for finishing aluminum housings of helicopter gear transmissions, characterized by complex and non-repetitive shapes, and by severe dimensional and geometrical accuracy demands. Experimental results
demonstrate enhanced performances of the robotic workcell and improved final quality of the housings
Safe navigation and human-robot interaction in assistant robotic applications
L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen
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