Optimization of the Speed & Separation Monitoring Protective Separation Distance in Human-Robot Collaboration Safety Systems

Efforts to create a safe collaborative working environment between humans and industrial robots are the subject of research interests. As per the current trend in industries, when a human enters a robot's workspace protected by fences, the safety system stops the robot. So, full efficiency is not realized as there is an increase in the robot's downtime. One solution is to enable a fluid human-robot collaboration in the same workspace in which the robot's need to stop is reduced. However, not stopping the robot leads to a potential risk of collision between the human and the robot. According to ISO/TS 15066, Safety control schemes based on speed and separation monitoring allow human operators to share the same workspace as the robot while in motion. The robot motion and velocity are dependent on the distance between the operator and the robot. In this paper, we examine how the researchers attempt to reduce the protective separation distance (PSD) between the robot and the human for human-robot collaboration work and modify its equation to identify scope for efficiency.