Simulation Platform to Investigate Safe Operation of Human-Robot Collaboration Systems

In industrial human-robot collaboration (HRC) the question, how can such systems be designed safely is paramount. In general, it is difficult to assess those systems with all their capabilities prior to commissioning. In this paper we propose specialized simulation tools as one potential solution to this issue. We use real-world geometrical data to investigate different algorithms and safety strategies. One strategy is the use of a genetic algorithm for collision avoidance to deal with amounts of data in short computing times. This is a solution to find a safe distance with adaptive speed in HRC assembly applications.