SHAREWORK | Safe and effective HumAn-Robot coopEration toWards a better cOmpetiveness on cuRrent automation lacK manufacturing processes.

SHAREWORK's main objective was to endow an industrial work environment of the necessary intelligence and methods for the effective adoption of Human Robot Collaboration (HRC) with not fences, providing a system capable of understanding the environment and human actions through knowledge and sensors, future state predictions and with the ability to make a robot act accordingly while human safety is guaranteed and the human-related barriers are overcome. SHAREWORK will develop the needed technology for facing the new production paradigm compiling the necessary developments in a set of modular hardware, software and procedures to face different HRC applications in a systematic and effective way.

A knowledge base (KB) to include system know-how data as well as real-time environment information was developed. An environment run-time perception and cognition updates this KB with object detection, human tracking and task identification. A human-aware dynamic task planning system reacts based on previous knowledge and environment status by reassigning tasks and/or reconfiguring robot control. This data allows  robot intelligent motion planners to control robots while safety is ensured by a continuous ergonomics and risk assessment module to face a safety-productivity trade-off. A multimodal human-robot communication system  provides interfaces for bidirectional communication between operator and robot. Finally, methods for overcoming human-related barriers and data reliability and security concerning the entire framework are applied for a successful integration in the industry.

SHAREWORK technology has been demonstrated in four different industrial cases: for railway, automotive, mechanical machining and equipment goods sectors. The usability of the developed HRC solutions in different industrial sectors and company sizes will increase productivity, flexibility, and reduce human stress, to support the workers and to strengthen European industry.

SHAREWORK project progress beyond the state-of-the-art by designing and developing a knowledge base capable of supporting all the cognitive processes involved in the controller of the robot by leveraging and extending a suited ontology. This project solves the semantic cognition in a highly dynamic and complex environment as given in a modern production environment.  This environment cognition is also extended by recognizing and predicting usual human movements and adding its dynamic primitives to the motion library without the need of "teaching" the robot. SHAREWORK has developed a human aware motion planner to be used as an off-line motion planner and as real-time motion planner, exploiting the massive GPU parallelization. Furthermore, SHAREWORK has exploited the latest trends and advances in Augmented Reality (AR) technology and IoT wearable devices towards providing the human operators with the appropriate means during assembly operations in human robot collaborative workplaces. In addition, SHAREWORK studies and validates best practices to improve human-robot collaboration acceptance and satisfaction in industrial environments 

SHAREWORK project has a positive impact to general European industry by developing costeffective, and easy to adapt and reconfigure solutions for the implementation of collaborative robotic systems. Any company has access to the developed modules within the project through the possibility to acquire the required modules developed and implement it to their industrial processes, increasing efficiency and productivity. The SHAREWORK framework impacts on the profitability of these manufacturing companies, the majority of which are SMEs, by reducing operational costs. This will result in more job security and direct and indirect job creation in the European manufacturing sector. It will also impact on the employability opportunities. The SHAREWORK framework has a substantial impact on the environmental performance of manufacturing processes and thus will support European industries to achieve the ambitious goals set in the Europe 2020 strategy for sustainability, resource efficiency and climate and energy targets, and beyond.