Collaborative Robot’s Perception of Human Co-Worker’s Work Status and Health Condition and Feedback of Its Condition Using the Robot’s Facial Expression

Abstract

Human-robot collaboration (HRC), in which robots and humans work in the same space, has been widely introduced to flexibly respond to changes in production lines. However, current collaborative robots are not equipped with a function to care about and communicate the work condition of the co-workers. Without this function, it is difficult for the co-worker to notice problems in its own work, and it is difficult to prevent human error and accidents. To solve this problem, this study created a system that evaluates the condition of a person's work and feeds back the evaluation in the form of facial expressions. We also conducted experiments using the system in repetitive assembly and collaborative tasks to verify the system. The results suggested that the proposed system would cause workers to perform repetitive tasks while reflecting on their own work one at a time.