Safe Close-Proximity and Physical Human-Robot Interaction Using Industrial Robots

Industrial robots have been employed worldwide in the manufacturing sector for performing tasks quickly, repeatedly and accurately in relatively static environments for over 30 years. In recent years, close physical interaction between industrial robots and human operators has attracted researchers´ attention and encouraged a number of technological innovations to turn these robots into human-robot platforms. In this work a specially designed compliant wrist is developed to support dexterous robotic interaction with live proximity and contact feedback. The compliant wrist incorporates a level of compliance into an initially non-compliant manipulator robot which allows the robot to dynamically adapt to the surfaces it approaches or touches. Furthermore, to facilitate human -- robot interactions, the robot must be able to adapt its behaviour to the human partner. Therefore, a real-time path planning method is developed to generate online motion, adapt the robot to dynamic changes in the environment and ensure smooth interactions. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated through experimental results on a CRS-F3 manipulator.