Safe Collaboration Between Human and Robot in a Context of Intermittent Haptique Interface

Abstract

In the list of interfaces used to make virtual reality, haptic interfaces allow users to touch a virtual world with their hands. Traditionally, the user’s hand touches the end effector of a robotic arm. When there is no contact, the robotic arm is passive; when there is contact, the arm suppresses mobility to the user’s hand in certain directions. Unfortunately, the passive mode is never completely seamless to the user. Haptic interfaces with intermittent contacts are interfaces using industrial robots that move towards the user when contact needs to be made. As the user is immersed via a virtual reality Head Mounted Display (HMD), he cannot perceive the danger of a collision when he changes his area of interest in the virtual environment. The objective of this article is to describe movement strategies for the robot to be as fast as possible on the contact zone while guaranteeing safety. This work uses the concept of predicting the position of the user through his gaze direction and the position of his dominant hand (the one touching the object). A motion generation algorithm is proposed and then applied to a UR5 robot with an HTC vive tracker system for an industrial application involving the analysis of materials in the interior of a car.