Structured collaborative behavior of industrial robots in mixed human-robot environments

In mixed human-robot environments safety and productivity are two important factors for the design of robotic collaborative behaviors. The collaborative behavior should be able to uphold productivity as far as possible while respecting safety constraints for varying collaboration modes and evaluation criteria. In this paper, a concept of using a finite state automaton for structuring the collaborative behavior of industrial robots is proposed to systematically handle the following exceptions. Safety and productivity (S&P) exceptions which either interfere with productivity or compromise workers safety are caught by the corresponding exception reaction. The regular production operation after an exception reaction is restored with exception recovery strategies. The state automaton model for an industrial assembly scenario is finally presented to illustrate this concept. A demonstration realizing the example for interaction between an ABB Dual-Arm Concept Robot and a human is discussed.