Understanding situational and mode awareness for safe human-robot collaboration: case studies on assembly applications

Varun Gopinath,Kerstin Johansen

doi:10.1007/s11740-018-0868-2

Abstract

In order for humans and robots to collaborate on an assembly line, safety of operations is a prerequisite. In this article, two assembly stations where a large industrial robots collaborate with humans will be analysed with the aim to 1. determine the characteristics of hazards associated with human-robot interaction and 2. design solutions that can mitigate risks associated with these hazards. To support the aim of this article, a literature review will attempt to characterize automation and detail the problems associated with human-automation interaction. The analysis points at situational awareness and mode-awareness as contributing factors to operator and process safety. These underlying mechanisms, if recognised by the risk assessment team as hazards, can mitigate risks of operator injury or production delays. This article details the function of visual and physical interfaces that allow operators to comprehend system-state in order to avoid undesirable situations.

Highlights

Collaborative Operations (CO) refers to the ability for an industrial robot and an operator to share a common workspace—referred to as collaborative workspace (CW)—in order to complete tasks [1,2,3]
The hazardous situations might lead to an accident resulting in serious injury to the operator, safety is a requirement for collaborative applications [4]
The analysis focused on the nature of tasks, in terms of task delegation, spatial location of the tasks and timeframe which governed completion of the delegated tasks

Summary

Introduction

Collaborative Operations (CO) refers to the ability for an industrial robot and an operator to share a common workspace—referred to as collaborative workspace (CW)—in order to complete tasks [1,2,3]. The cases presented are results of research undertaken to understand safety issues related to collaboration with large industrial robots. They were developed in cooperation with manufacturing and safety engineers to demonstrate industrially relevant safety solutions, which led to the installation of two laboratory demonstrators [37,38,39]. The operator can safely enter the fenced zone (Fig. 3)

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Methods

Discussion

Conclusion