Manipulator Collision Avoidance System Based on a 3D Potential Field With ISO 15066

Abstract

Recently, various intelligent technological innovations are being applied to smart factories. As manipulators are widely used in smart factories, the manipulator and the workspace of humans overlap, and interest in cooperative robots and human safety has increased. In relation to this, a collision-avoidance control algorithm applicable in three dimensions (3D) and that also meets existing safety standards for humans and robots is required. In this paper, we propose a 3D potential field-based manipulator collision avoidance algorithm that meets the requirements of the ISO 15066 standard. This algorithm applies Speed and Separation Monitoring(SSM) according to the distance between the manipulator and the obstacle and controls the speed of the manipulator slowly as the risk is higher. This allows us to overcome the limitations that existing studies have not been conducted on 3D potential field-based obstacle avoidance and that it is difficult to apply to the field without considering ISO 15066. The proposed system was verified through simulation and experiments, and through comparison with the existing algorithm, we verified that SSM was well applied to the proposed system.