Abstract
Perception capability assumes significant importance for human–robot interaction. The forthcoming industrial environments will require a high level of automation to be flexible and adaptive enough to comply with the increasingly faster and low-cost market demands. Autonomous and collaborative robots able to adapt to varying and dynamic conditions of the environment, including the presence of human beings, will have an ever-greater role in this context. However, if the robot is not aware of the human position and intention, a shared workspace between robots and humans may decrease productivity and lead to human safety issues. This paper presents a survey on sensory equipment useful for human detection and action recognition in industrial environments. An overview of different sensors and perception techniques is presented. Various types of robotic systems commonly used in industry, such as fixed-base manipulators, collaborative robots, mobile robots and mobile manipulators, are considered, analyzing the most useful sensors and methods to perceive and react to the presence of human operators in industrial cooperative and collaborative applications. The paper also introduces two proofs of concept, developed by the authors for future collaborative robotic applications that benefit from enhanced capabilities of human perception and interaction. The first one concerns fixed-base collaborative robots, and proposes a solution for human safety in tasks requiring human collision avoidance or moving obstacles detection. The second one proposes a collaborative behavior implementable upon autonomous mobile robots, pursuing assigned tasks within an industrial space shared with human operators.
Highlights
The perception capabilities of robots will gain ever-greater importance in the smart factories
Human intention recognition is a trending topic within the HR Interaction (HRI) research field, especially for industrial environments
Future smart production processes will have to cope with the need to guarantee the satisfying of production KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and the new robotic systems integrated in such processes will have to be compliant with these requirements, too [85]; boosting HR Perception (HRP) will help to satisfy safety requirements, but it will contribute to hit ideal overall KPIs
Summary
The perception capabilities of robots will gain ever-greater importance in the smart factories. CPSs should be able to reprogram their activities reacting to the presence of humans or other mobile systems, but generally they do not interact or collaborate actively with them This leads to conceive the future evolution of the CPSs towards Cyber Physical Human Systems (CPHSs) [5,6], where the control, communication and automation technologies, physical plants and humans must pursue a common goal. Blue-Depth), and more recent event-based cameras stand out among the vision sensors, whereas the most used distance sensors are based on light scan technology, such as the LIDAR The goal of this survey is to provide useful information to accomplish several robotic tasks in HR collaborative industrial environments.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
