Interleaved Online Task Planning, Simulation, Task Allocation and Motion Control for Flexible Human-Robot Cooperation

Abstract

Modern manufacturing paradigms introduce the need for robots able to naturally cooperate with humans in an unstructured and dynamic environment. In this article we extend FlexHRC, an architecture for flexible and collaborative manufacturing robots, with an online perception-simulationplanning framework that allows the robot to assess the status of the workspace, keeping track at all times of the stage at which the cooperative manufacturing process is, to identify its next action, to simulate it to check its feasibility and, as a consequence, to dynamically allocate tasks to itself or the human operator. We have tested the FlexHRC with a dual-arm manipulator cooperating with a person to assemble a table with one tabletop and four legs.

Human–Robot Collaboration in Manufacturing Applications: A Review

“…As the research progressed, an increasing number of studies were focused on HRI methodologies, becoming a predominant objective in 2017. The ostensible reduction in 2018 should not mislead us to believe that HRI studies were abandoned in that year: As stated before, the presented classification is not univocal, thus studies such as [42][43][44] could also be considered HRI studies. Figure 6.…”

Operations management issues in design and control of hybrid human-robot collaborative manufacturing systems: a survey

“…The introduced approach includes an inventory of common manual and automated tasks, resources needed to execute these tasks, design of products to be produced, and analysis of different tasks allocation to humans and cobots based on their capability. Some researchers have only recently begun to study HRC systems in the context of operations management (Darvish et al, 2018;Bogner et al, 2018;Michalos et al, 2018b). The related topics include system's design (Chen et al, 2011;Michalos et al, 2018b), line balancing (Weckenborg et al, 2019), scheduling (Bogner et al, 2018;Casalino et al, 2019), resource allocation (Takata & Hirano, 2011), and task planning and assignment (Chen et al, 2013;Hu & Chen, 2017;Darvish et al, 2018).…”

“…There exist methods for the design of HRC systems in cellular manufacturing systems (Tan et al, 2009(Tan et al, , 2010, flexible assembly lines , 2018, and cellular manufacturing systems (Kato et al, 2010;Hu et al, 2013). The typical methods to tackle operations management problems in HRC systems include linear/non-linear programing (Hu & Chen, 2017;Bogner et al, 2018), (mixed-)integer programing (Weckenborg et al, 2019), heuristics (Bogner et al, 2018) metaheuristics algorithms (Chen et al, 2013;Weckenborg et al, 2019), multi-criteria evaluation approach (Michalos et al, 2018b), and simulation models (Darvish et al, 2018;Bänziger et al, 2018).…”

“…For instance, the presence of both humans and cobots in the line affects the sequencing of tasks and products (Bogner et al, 2018), and the tasks assignment must account for processing times, skills, physical and mental conditions, geometrical dimensions. HRC systems often require online task assignments to humans and cobots based on their current states (Darvish et al, 2018) and characteristics (Chen et al, 2013). Precisely, Darvish et al (2018) proposed an online task planning technique using simulation to predict robot's behaviors, then assign tasks dynamically.…”

“…HRC systems often require online task assignments to humans and cobots based on their current states (Darvish et al, 2018) and characteristics (Chen et al, 2013). Precisely, Darvish et al (2018) proposed an online task planning technique using simulation to predict robot's behaviors, then assign tasks dynamically.…”