Integrating Human Behavioral Model for Intimate-distance Human Robot Collaboration

In this paper, we present a method for integrating a human behavior model into robot motion control to enable safer intimate distance Human Robot Collaboration (HRC). This approach establishes safety parameters based on personality and experience, and optimizes the system through observing human reactions. It integrates a behavior pattern-based emergency shutdown. In our experiment, we tried to validate our claim that incorporating a human behavior model into the robot control will increase the safety of the system in intimate distance conditions. Validation through a mixed-reality approach demonstrates the feasibility of the framework in a simulated environment, ensuring ethical considerations and safety. Notably, it outperforms traditional benchmarks, and other forecasting based approaches, achieving zero collisions in 100 trials and exhibiting a forecasting error rate below 10mm. Despite notable improvements, challenges persist, including residual time delays in safety compensations and potential slowdowns for introverted, inexperienced workers. While these limitations need further refinement, the proposed approach signifies a substantial stride towards safer HRC, successfully preventing collisions in intimate distance conditions.