A real time distributed approach to collision avoidance for industrial manipulators

Abstract

Robot interaction with the surrounding environment is an important and newsworthy problem in the context of industrial and service robotics. Collision avoidance gives the robot the ability to avoid contacts with objects around it, but most of the industrial controls implementing collision avoidance checks only the robot Tool Center Point (TCP) over the objects in the cell, without taking into account the shape of the tool, mounted on the robot flange. In this paper a novel approach is proposed, based on an accurate 3D simulation of the robotic cell. A distributed real time computing approach has been chosen to avoid any overloading of the robot controller. The simulator and the client application are implemented in a personal computer, connected via a TCP-IP socket to the robot controller, which hosts and manages the anti-collision policies, based on a proper speed override control. The real time effectiveness of the proposed approach has been confirmed by experimental tests, carried out for a real industrial setup in two different scenarios.

On-line collision avoidance for collaborative robot manipulators by adjusting off-line generated paths: An industrial use case

“…PF-based robot self-collision avoidance has been studied, as well as the development of collision avoidance techniques for redundant robots [8]. A distributed real-time approach to collision avoidance considering not only the robot tool centre point over the objects in the cell, but also the body of the tool mounted on the robot flange is in [6]. A passivity-based control scheme for human-robot safe cooperation is proposed in [37].…”

Development of a Virtual Collision Sensor for Industrial Robots

“…Collision detection and avoidance are fundamental issues for the safety of a robotic cell in any industrial environment, not only in the future when the presence of collaborative robots directly working with humans is expected to grow, but also in current, standard production lines. Errors in programming, as well as unexpected events or objects in the robot workspace may lead to collisions, despite the monitoring activity of collision avoidance procedures (e.g., like in [ 1 , 2 ]), if they are based on a detailed prior knowledge of the cell and of the elements in it. Using an advanced collision detection procedure, collisions can be quickly detected, so that an appropriate reaction, reducing their effects, can be planned and executed.…”

Development of a mobile robotic phenotyping system for growth chamber-based studies of genotype x environment interactions

“…Some simulation-based approaches use robot simulators such as V-Rep (Rohmer, Singh, & Freese, 2013) to simulate the currently-running robot environment, and use the feedback to slow down robots as appropriate to lower risk of collision (Fenucci, Indri, & Romanelli, 2014). In Fennucci's case, unfortunately, results have not been reported on dynamically-updated obstacles, although it appears possible given their framework.…”