Development of a Simulation-based Risk Assessment Tool for HRC Applications

The use of human-robot collaboration (HRC) systems requires a risk assessment prior to commissioning. Simulations of collaborative workflows can support the risk assessment process and allow users to identify potential hazards at early stages of development. However, simulation-based risk assessment still has a number of open challenges, including modeling human workers, choosing appropriate risk metrics and creating relevant test scenarios. This paper presents an approach that addresses these challenges by using motion capture data, collision force estimation, and search algorithms. Preliminary results are presented and future research challenges are discussed. In the long term, the presented approach will be further developed into a tool for the simulator ABB RobotStudio.