A projection-based sensor system for ensuring safety while grasping and transporting objects by an industrial robot

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach for safely monitoring the grasping as well as the transportation of objects by an industrial robot in human-robot cooperation scenarios. We argue that the proposed projection-based sensor system is well suited to generate and establish dynamically well-shaped safety spaces enclosing both the robot and the desired object simultaneously. Depending on the proximity of object and robot these safety spaces may be clearly separated or also fused to an overall comprising one, providing as most as possible of the workspace to the user at any time. In this contribution we describe the adaptation of our projection-based sensor system and explain in detail our method to deal with these so called distributed safety spaces that allow a multi-purpose safeguarding of robots, objects or any safety-related area.