Abstract
The use of collaborative robots in the industrial domain has significantly grown in the last years, allowing humans to operate in the same workspace occupied by robots without any physical barriers. Understandably, the safety of the human operator has been a major concern both for researchers and regulatory bodies. The power and force limited modality of robots is of particular interest in that sense, being used in order to bound the energy of eventual collisions when a close physical interaction with humans is necessary. Such an interaction modality allows the robotic system to operate without the use of barriers, but a measurement of the force and pressure occurring due to a contact must be provided as part of the risk assessment. However, the precise procedure to follow in order to reliably provide such measures is still unclear for users and system integrators willing to self-assess the safety of their own collaborative robotic system. In this work, the repeatability and reliability of such testing procedures and measures are analyzed with an interlaboratory comparison approach, with the aim to establish the degree of variability possibly encountered when performing the same test under slightly different conditions.
Highlights
In the industrial sector, the number of workplaces where people work in proximity to or even cooperate with robots has significantly increased over the last few years [1], [2]
With reference to the four interaction modalities described by the standard [7], this paper focuses on Power and force limiting (PFL) and, in particular, on the assessment of unintended collisions between human and robot, which stands as the most hazardous occurrence in human-robot collaboration (HRC)
Considering a pre-defined set of impact configurations, the same tests were performed in four different laboratories, simulating the assessment of hypothetic ‘‘quasistatic’’ human-robot contact scenarios
Summary
The number of workplaces where people work in proximity to or even cooperate with robots has significantly increased over the last few years [1], [2]. Some applications require robots to work in the same shared workspace with the human operator for the entire duration of the process. There is a risk of collisions between humans and robots [3]. In order to be distributed and used in Europe, a programmable robotic system must comply with the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC [4] and be provided with an EC Declaration of conformity. The specific requirements for industrial robots and robotic systems are illustrated in the ISO technical standards 10218-1 [5] and 10218-2 [6].
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