The ANBOT: An Intelligent Robotic Coworker for Industrial Abrasive Blasting We present the ANBOT, an intelligent robotic coworker for physical humanrobot collaboration. The ANBOT system assists workers performing industrial abrasive blasting, shielding them from the large forces experienced during this physically demanding task. The cooperative robotic system combines the strength and endurance of robots with the decision making of skilled workers. The inherent challenges in humanrobot collaboration, combined with the difficult blasting environment required novel design decisions to be made and new solutions to be developed. These include an approach for handling kinematic singularities in a manner suitable for humanrobot cooperation, estimating worker pose under poor visibility conditions, and an intuitive control scheme that adapts the robotic assistance based on the estimated strength of the worker. In this work we summarise the ANBOT system and present findings from preliminary site trials. The trials included several real industrial blasting tasks under the control of a skilled abrasive blasting worker who had no experience working alongside a robot. Results demonstrate the suitability of the ANBOT for practical industrial applications.

Proof of concept of a projectionbased safety system for humanrobot collaborative engine assembly In the past years humanrobot collaboration has gained interest among industry and production environments. While there is interest towards the topic, there is a lack of industrially relevant cases utilizing novel methods and technologies. The feasibility of the implementation, worker safety and production efficiency are the key questions in the field. The aim of the proposed work is to provide a conceptual safety system for contextdependent, multimodal communication in humanrobot collaborative assembly, which will contribute to safety and efficiency of the collaboration. The approach we propose offers an addition to traditional interfaces like push buttons installed at fixed locations. We demonstrate an approach and corresponding technical implementation of the system with projected safety zones based on the dynamically updated depth map and a graphical user interface (GUI). The proposed interaction is a simplified twoway communication between human and the robot to allow both parties to notify each other, and for the human to coordinate the operations.