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-simulation-planning 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.