Semantic Understanding of Collaborative Robotic Workspaces

The emerging Industry 4.0 paradigm facilitates intelligent factories where machines, robots and human workers work side by side. Collaboration between these entities in a factory environment allows having higher throughput with the ability to perform complex processes which needs multiple skills from robots as well as humans. Properly understanding the surrounding environment of these factories by the machines is crucial for ensuring safety and keeping the efficiency to a maximum.

Currently, in most cases robots operate in a specific confined area called “robot cells” and they have limited perception of the environment. Robot cells are usually physically separated from the environment with specific entry points allowing for human operators or other robots like AGVs to interact. These interactions are kept minimal and simple in most implementations we can see today. Safety sensors are used to detect when something or someone crosses the boundaries of the robot cell. Usually, a detection from a safety sensor slow down or completely stop the operation of the robot.