Working Together: A Review on Safe Human-Robot Collaboration in Industrial Environments

By Sandra Robla-Gómez, Victor M. Becerra, Jose Ramon Llata, Esther Gonzalez-Sarabia, Carlos Torre-Ferrero, Juan Pérez-Oria. IEEE Access, 2017

479 citations recorded by the source corpus.

After many years of rigid conventional procedures of production, industrial manufacturing is going through a process of change toward flexible and intelligent manufacturing, the so-called Industry 4.0. In this paper, human–robot collaboration has an important role in smart factories since it contributes to the achievement of higher productivity and greater efficiency. However, this evolution means breaking with the established safety procedures as the separation of workspaces between robot and human is removed. These changes are reflected in safety standards related to industrial robotics since the last decade, and have led to the development of a wide field of research focusing on the prevention of human–robot impacts and/or the minimization of related risks or their consequences. This paper presents a review of the main safety systems that have been proposed and applied in industrial robotic environments that contribute to the achievement of safe collaborative human–robot work. Additionally, a review is provided of the current regulations along with new concepts that have been introduced in them. The discussion presented in this paper includes multi-disciplinary approaches, such as techniques for estimation and the evaluation of injuries in human–robot collisions, mechanical and software devices designed to minimize the consequences of human–robot impact, impact detection systems, and strategies to prevent collisions or minimize their consequences when they occur.

Subfields: Control and Systems Engineering, Medical Laboratory Technology, Radiological and Ultrasound Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2980a8df6954c6b796c205dc13581d85c2708606

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Control and Systems Engineering

  1. Abderraouf Maoudj
  2. Isma Akli
  3. A. Hentout
  4. Aouache Mustapha

Citations in the corpus