Detecting Approaching Human Hands in a Human-Robot Coexistent Food Preparation Work Area for Preventing Collision

• Published in: Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life Vol. 9; no. 3; pp. 289 - 294
• Main Authors: Tan, Joo Kooi, Yotsumoto, Takaaki, Ono, Yuta
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: ALife Robotics Corporation Ltd 2022
• Subjects: Grab cut; Hand area extraction; Lab color system; Recognition
• ISSN: 2405-9021; 2352-6386
• DOI: 10.57417/jrnal.9.3_289

In Japan, the population of working age between 15 and 64 years old peaked in 1995 at about 87 million and is expected to continue to decline in the future. Therefore, to solve the labor shortage, the introduction of industrial robots that can perform the same level of work as humans is strongly requested especially in the food preparation industry. In order to prevent danger to workers there, industrial robots must recognize workers and avoid them when there is fear of collision. In this paper, we propose a method for extracting hand regions based on the color distribution of a hand and GrabCut in an experimental environment to recognize human hands and detect their directions of approach. The proposed method was examined experimentally and gave satisfactory results.