Taking charge of one’s own safety while collaborating with robots: Enhancing situational awareness for a safe environment

Abstract

Collaborative robots, designed to work alongside humans in industrial manufacturing, are becoming increasingly prevalent. These robots typically monitor their distance from workers and slow down or stop when safety thresholds are breached. However, this results in reduced task execution performance and safety-related uncertainty for the worker. To address these issues, we propose an alternative safety strategy, where the worker is responsible for their own safety and the robot executes its task without modifying its speed except in the case of imminent contact with the worker. The robot provides precise situation-awareness information to the worker using a mixed-reality display, presenting information about relative distance and movement intentions. The worker is then responsible for placing themselves with respect to the robot. A user study was conducted to evaluate the efficiency of task execution, worker safety, and user experience. Results suggest a good user experience and safety perception while maintaining worker safety, which would support social sustainability of human activities in industrial production contexts that require collaboration with robots.