How Safe the Human-Robot Coexistence Is? Theoretical Presentation

It is evident that industrial robots are able to generate forces high enough to injure a human. To prevent this, robots have to work within a restricted space that includes the entire region reachable by any part of the robot. However, more and more robot applications require human intervention due to superior abilities for some tasks performance. In this paper we introduce danger/safety indices which indicate a level of the risk during interaction with robots, which are based on a robot’s critical characteristics and on a human’s physical and mental constrains. Collision model for a 1 DOF robot and “human” was developed. Case study with further simulations was provided for the PUMA 560 robot.