Abstract
In road construction, in particular on a bustling highway, an operator is needed to alert the drivers to decelerate the speeding vehicles. In doing so, an operator is asked to stand at a safe place, some distance from the construction site and to wave a small flag. Although the flag is light, prolonged waving flag cause tiredness to the operator. If the operator stops shaking, the safety of his co-workers is at risk. It is a straightforward thinking that replacing a human operator with a robot operator is a good choice while keeping the human-like figure. The presence of a human figure effectively alerts the drivers as compared to object signs or signal lights. This paper presents a robotic, human-like figure that performs a simple one axis controlled flag waving task. It comes with a monocular vision that video streams the oncoming vehicles. A program is written in Python language with SimpleCV module that processes the video data. A signal is sent to the controller upon detecting the approaching vehicles. As a result, the robot operator would move its arm, thus waving a flag as a warning signal. A pneumatically powered actuator drives the arm. The robot operator was tested in a controlled environment where the results showed that it has a potential for field implementation.
Highlights
In road construction, in particular, on a bustling highway, an operator is needed to alert the drivers to decelerate the speeding vehicles
An operator is asked to stand at a safe place, some distance from the construction site and to wave a small flag
It is a straightforward thinking that replacing a human operator with a robot operator is a good choice while keeping the human-like figure
Summary
In particular, on a bustling highway, an operator is needed to alert the drivers to decelerate the speeding vehicles. The presence of a human figure effectively alerts the drivers as compared to object signs or signal lights. In humanoid robot (HR) design practice, certain values need prioritize. Such method includes the notion of safety and security, expressivity, believability, and organic [1]. Studies suggest that facially expressive robots are effective as therapeutic tools for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and tend to be more accepted by children if the robots are smaller [5]. It seems that HRs have gained social acceptance. It is fair to predict that robots will replace some jobs by 2025 [6]
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