AirTouch: Towards Safe Human-Robot Interaction Using Air Pressure Feedback and IR Mocap System

The growing use of robots in urban environments has raised concerns about potential safety hazards, especially in public spaces where humans and robots may interact. In this paper, we present a system for safe human-robot interaction that combines an infrared (IR) camera with a wearable marker and a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2023-07
Main Authors: Rakhmatulin, Viktor, Grankin, Denis, Konenkov, Mikhail, Davidenko, Sergei, Trinitatova, Daria, Sautenkov, Oleg, Tsetserukou, Dzmitry
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air flow
Human engineering
Infrared cameras
Potential fields
Robots
Safety barriers
Urban environments
Wearable technology
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The growing use of robots in urban environments has raised concerns about potential safety hazards, especially in public spaces where humans and robots may interact. In this paper, we present a system for safe human-robot interaction that combines an infrared (IR) camera with a wearable marker and airflow potential field. IR cameras enable real-time detection and tracking of humans in challenging environments, while controlled airflow creates a physical barrier that guides humans away from dangerous proximity to robots without the need for wearable devices. A preliminary experiment was conducted to measure the accuracy of the perception of safety barriers rendered by controlled air pressure. In a second experiment, we evaluated our approach in an imitation scenario of an interaction between an inattentive person and an autonomous robotic system. Experimental results show that the proposed system significantly improves a participant's ability to maintain a safe distance from the operating robot compared to trials without the system.
ISSN:2331-8422