Toward safe and high-performance human–robot collaboration via implementation of redundancy and understanding the effects of admittance term parameters

• Published in: Robotica Vol. 40; no. 7; pp. 2112 - 2127
• Main Authors: Kanık, Mert, Ayit, Orhan, Dede, Mehmet Ismet Can, Tatlicioglu, Enver
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.07.2022
• Subjects: Algorithms; Collaboration; Collision avoidance; Control systems design; Controllers; Electrical impedance; End effectors; Human performance; Industrial robots; Obstacle avoidance; Parameters; Redundancy; Robots; obstacle avoidance; admittance control; collaborative robot; redundancy resolution; human–robot interaction
• ISSN: 0263-5747; 1469-8668
• DOI: 10.1017/S0263574721001569

Today, demandsin industrial manufacturing mandate humans to work with large-scale industrial robots, and this collaboration may result in dangerous conditions for humans. To deal with this situation, this work proposes a novel approach for redundant large-scale industrial robots. In the proposed approach, an admittance controller is designed to regulate the interaction between the end effector of the robot and the human. Additionally, an obstacle avoidance algorithm is implemented in the null space of the robot to prevent any possible unexpected collision between the human and the links of the robot. After safety performance of this approach is verified via simulations and experimental studies, the effect of the parameters of the admittance controller on the performance of collaboration in terms of both accuracy and total human effort is investigated. This investigation is carried out via 8 experiments by the participation of 10 test subjects in which the effect of different admittance controller parameters such as mass and damper are compared. As a result of this investigation, tuning insights for such parameters are revealed.