Collaborative robotics

Until now, assembly lines were made up of zones where human operators intervened, and robotized zones where operators could not enter without interrupting the assembly line.

Since around 2010, physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) has been attracting considerable interest from the international research community.

Mastering the physical interactions between a robot and a human operator, and between a robot and its environment, opens the way to a new paradigm for the factory of the future. This new paradigm can be summed up by the introduction of new assembly lines made up of robots and operators sharing the same workspace.

This approach makes these new production areas more flexible and reconfigurable, while minimizing musculoskeletal disorders for operators through a more appropriate distribution of tasks. The aim is to distribute and share assembly work with the robot, which supports and handles heavy loads, leaving the operator to carry out the finer, more complex manipulations.

This article describes these new techniques for achieving safe and effective physical interaction between a robot and a human operator.

First, it presents the state of the art of human-machine cooperation in industry, and ISO standards relating to collaborative robotics. It then focuses on two aspects of human-robot collaboration: non-contact collaboration (for collision avoidance and detection) and physical collaboration (e.g. manual guidance). Finally, it presents some fundamental tools in collaborative robotics, including mobile collaborative robots, compliant actuators and some fundamental software libraries.