Effective Human-Robot Collaboration Through Wearable Sensors

Abstract

With the developments of collaborative robots in manufacturing, physical interactions between humans and robots represent a vital role in performing tasks collaboratively. Most conducted studies focused on robot motion planning and control during the execution of a task. However, for effective task distribution and allocation, human physical and psychological status are essential. In this research, a hardware setup and support software for a set of wearable sensors and a data acquisition framework, are developed. This can be used to develop more efficient Human-Robot collaboration strategies. The developed framework is intended to recognise the human mental state and physical activities. Subsequently, a robot could effectively and naturally perform the given task with the human. Besides, the collected data through the developed hardware enables online classification of human intentions and activities; therefore, robots can actively adapt to ensure the safety of the human while delivering the required task.