Using Multi-channel 3D Lidar for Safe Human-Robot Interaction

This paper proposes a novel application of multichannel 3D lidar data for safety in a physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI) scenario. To achieve the aforementioned, experiments were conducted to mimic a modern shop-floor environment. Data was collected from a pool of seventeen participants while performing pre-determined tasks in a shared workspace with the robot. A perception pipeline was developed that leveraged reflectivity images, signal images, near-infrared images, and point-cloud data from a 3D lidar. This data was then used to perform safety based control whilst satisfying the speed and separation monitoring (SSM) criteria. In order to support the perception pipeline, a state-of-the-art object detection network was leveraged and fine-tuned. An analysis is provided along with results of the perception and the safety based controller.