Situational zone-based robot control for heterogeneous safety sensors in agile HRI applications

According to the standard ISO/TS 15066, a human-robot shared workspace could be divided into different zones with various collaborative modes. Usually, this division is based on the distance between human and robot, the level of human-robot interaction “HRI”, and the risk assessment. These factors define the robot velocity and the required sensors for ensuring human safety in every zone and every operation mode separately. This procedure could generally ensure human safety during interaction with industrial robots. However, productivity, efficiency and diversity of the shared tasks have been overtaken. This work proposes a system that simultaneously can use heterogeneous safety sensors in all collaborative operation modes. Furthermore, it presents situational zone-based robot control with the help of 3D advanced selection matrices. Every robot-subspace could be vision-, force-, or position-controlled in every zone, depending on the tasks and safety requirements. Using the proposed system, heavy-duty and collaborative robot “cobots” can perform various shared tasks with humans safely and efficiently. The proposed approach is tested in one use case in the automotive industry.