Safe Manual Control of Slow-Moving Industrial Robots

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Safe Manual Control of Slow-Moving Industrial Robots

Y. Beauchamp / M. Jaraiedi / J. Etherton

Factors that may contribute to the dangerous misjudgments people can make when they must work near industrial robots were examined. Entrapment may be possible, even by a slow-moving robot, particularly for individuals who must work on programming and troubleshooting. In 27 out of 36 robot-related injuries in Sweden, the injured person was involved in adjustment, repair or programming tasks with moving object hazards. In a study of 170 cases, three motion control problems accounted for 145 of the cases: sudden, unprogrammed startup; robot or associated machines had not been stopped; and uncontrolled movement. Some studies of slow robot speed have been conducted to determine how quickly people can react to unexpected robot movement, but the problem may be whether or not the human will even detect the unexpected movement. Research on human performance related to slow robot speed will have great impact on develop automatic safety sensing devices for robots. Quantitative information regarding slow speed requirements may be used by designers of robot controllers. Such information could result in changes in the speed limit automatically set when a manual operating mode is selected and could result in the development of training aids to help trainees understand their reaction limitations at different robot speeds.