PowerMate – A Safe and Intuitive Robot Assistant for Handling and Assembly Tasks

Abstract

In this contribution a robot assistant for handling and assembly tasks is presented. The main emphasis of PowerMate was to create a robot assistant that works together with a human worker that is conform to safety category 3 according to DIN ISO 954 and to use components suitable for industrial use, which leads to certain constrains on the possible control mechanisms. An overview of existing concepts of man-machine-cooperation is given. Different architectures for these kinds of robot assistants are discussed. A user-customizable motion control for PowerMate is presented. A description of the force-movement-calculations, the hardware and software architecture and the safety system of the robot assistant is given.