Safe Human-Robot Cooperation in an Industrial Environment

The standard EN ISO10218 is fostering the implementation of hybrid production systems, i.e., production systems characterized by a close relationship among human operators and robots in cooperative tasks. Human‐robot hybrid systems could have a big economic benefit in small and medium sized production, even if this new paradigm introduces mandatory, challenging safety aspects. Among various requirements for collaborative workspaces, safety‐assurance involves two different application layers; the algorithms enabling safe space‐sharing between humans and robots and the enabling technologies allowing acquisition data from sensor fusion and environmental data analysing. This paper addresses both the problems: a collision avoidance strategy allowing on‐line re‐planning of robot motion and a safe network of unsafe devices as a suggested infrastructure for functional safety achievement.