Development of a direct teaching system for a cooperative cell-production robot considering safety and operability

A direct teaching system emphasizing safety and operability for SP02, an upper-body humanoid that cooperates with a human in a cell-production workspace has been described. The system has a direct teaching device, which enables an operator to teach a multi-D.O.F manipulator at comfortable posture despite large changes in the pose of an end-effector. The double-checked safety-related part (SRP/CS) introducing a safety module satisfies the safety performance defined in the international safety standard. To make the teaching easier to perform, impedance parameters in a variable impedance control are set through several direct teaching experiments. Through a simple direct teaching experiment, the safety performance of the SRP/CS and the teaching performance of the direct teaching system was successfully confirmed.