Industrial human-robot collaboration : maximizing performance while maintaining safety

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to maximize performance in collaborative applications, while maintaining safety. For this, assembly workplaces are analyzed, typical tasks identified, and the potential of collaborative robots is elaborated. Current safety regulations are analyzed in order to identify the challenges in safe human-robot collaboration. Different methods are proposed to solve inefficiency in collaborative applications, in particular, intuitive programming of collaborative robots, efficient control with human-in-the-loop constraints, and a hardware solution, the Robotic Airbag.