Institut des Systèmes Intelligents
et de Robotique

Collaborative robots

 

The contribution of ISIR in collaborative robotics are twofolds. The first contributions is related to the control of robots evolving in dynamic and constrained contexts. In such contexts, the controller needs to address the compromise between the optimal use of the dynamic capabilities of the robot while ensuring the viability of the chosen control solution. This is especially complex when the operational objectives of the robot are not known in advance but rather specified online through its interactions with the world. In this context, we propose a constrained optimization based formulation of the reactive control problem. This formulation accounts for the dynamic capabilities of the robot and ensures, under some assumptions, the existence of a solution to the control problem over a time horizon. Considering the specific case of a human and a robot sharing the same workspace, we also propose to account for the safety of the human operator by constraining the energy that the robot can actually exhibit in its presence. These works are presented in the following articles:

• L. Joseph, V. Padois, and G. Morel (Submitted), Towards x-ray medical imaging with robots in the open : safety without compromising performances, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
• A. Meguenani, V. Padois, J. Da Silva, A. Hoarau, and P. Bidaud (2017), Energy-based control for safe human- robot physical interactions, Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics - The 2016 International Symposium on Experimental Robotics HAL version
• S. Rubrecht, V. Padois, P. Bidaud, M. de Broissia, and M. Da Silva Simoes (2012), Motion safety and constraints compatibility for multibody robots, Autonomous Robots, 32(3), pp.333–349 HAL version

Related projects: RTE Chair of Intervention Robotics, GE Healthcare CIFRE of Lucas Joseph

The second contribution relates to quantification of performances of such collaborative systems in order to:

• analyse them, both in terms of operational performance and ergonomic performance. One of the approaches that we develop relies on the quantitative evaluation of ergonomics through means of dynamic simulation based on models of realistic virtual humans.
• perform a non-intrusive and quantitative evaluation of the dynamics of industrial gestures and automatically synthesise optimal robotic assistance to improve these gestures. This synthesis requires to determine the meaningful ergonomic indicators in a given context. In our work, this determination is based on a sensitivity analysis performed using virtual humans in simulation.

An overview of the work can be found in the following article:

• P. Maurice, V. Padois, Y. Measson, and P. Bidaud (2017), Human-oriented design of collaborative robots, International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics Vol. 57, pp. 88-102. HAL version