Human-Aware Motion Planner for Collaborative Transportation of Flexible Materials

In industrial environments like factories and warehouses, transportation of flexible materials that need the collaboration of several subjects is a typical activity. One instance is the handling of enormous fibre sheets in the fabrication of composite parts, which presents several difficulties, including handling flexible materials and needing to place the material with extreme precision. Recently, there has been a lot of interest in employing robots to help human workers carry such things. However, this typically entails the robot adopting a follower attitude just intended for passive support without fully using its accuracy and repeatability. To make the best possible use of the robot’s and the operator’s skills, it is necessary to use an intelligent motion planner that takes into account the ergonomics of the operator but at the same time ensures the precision required by the task. In this paper, we present a preliminary study for a Human-Aware Motion Planner for the cooperative transportation of materials.