Online Active Safety for Robotic Manipulators Future manufacturing environments will see an increased need for cooperation between humans and machines. In this paper we propose a method that allows industrial manipulators to safely operate around humans. This approach guarantees that the manipulator will never collide with human operators while performing its normal tasks. This is done in an nearoptimal way by considering how forward reachable sets of human operators grow with time, and by continuously updating these reachable sets based on current position estimates of the operators near the robot. An implicit active set invariance filter is then used to constrain the systemxe2x80x94in a minimally invasive wayxe2x80x94to stay in the complement of that forward reachable set. We demonstrate this approach in simulation on an industrial robotic arm: the ABB IRB 6640.

Dynamic Risk Assessment and Active Response Strategy for Industrial HumanRobot Collaboration Abstract   To enhance flexibility and sustainability, humanrobot collaboration is becoming a major feature of nextgeneration robots. The safety assessment strategy is the first and crucial issue that needs to be considered due to the removal of the safety barrier. This paper determined the set of safety indicators and established an assessment model based on the latest safetyrelated ISO standards and manufacturing conditions. A dynamic modified SSM (speed and separation monitoring) method is presented for ensuring the safety of humanrobot collaboration while maintaining productivity as high as possible. A prototype system including dynamic risk assessment and safe motion control is developed based on the virtual model of the robot and human skeleton point data from the vision sensor. The realtime risk status of the working robot can be known and the risk field around the robot which is visualized in an augmented reality environment so as to ensure safe humanrobot collaboration. This system is experimentally validated on a humanrobot collaboration cell using an industrial robot with six degrees of freedom.