Spatial regions potentially occupied by a robot (or other machinery) or portion thereof and a human operator during performance of all or a defined portion of a task or an application are computationally estimated. These “potential occupancy envelopes” (POEs) may be based on the states (e.g., the current and expected positions, velocities, accelerations, geometry and/or kinematics) of the robot and the human operator. Once the POEs of human operators in the workspace are established, they can be used to guide or revise motion planning for task execution.

A method for controlling the operation of a robot within a system. The system includes the robot and sensors to analyze the concentric environment of the system. The sensors include a contact sensor, a proximity sensor and a vision and location sensor. For each of the axes of the robot, a maximum allowable force value is obtained. If the force on one of the axes of the robot is greater than the maximum value, the robot is stopped in its position. A concentric monitoring space or a security space is obtained as a function of the speed of the robot. The environment of the robot is monitored by the sensors. If the intrusion of an object is detected in the safe space of the robot, the maneuvering speed of the robot is gradually decreased to a safe speed. The process is repeated for the next axis of the robot.

An exemplary robotic system includes a plurality of controllable joints and a controller. An exemplary control method provides for controlling the controllable joints by the controller. The control method provides for determining a configuration space for the robotic system and determining a reference movement path within the configuration space. The control method then provides for assigning a plurality of streamlines in the configuration space to yield a flow field based on the reference movement path. The control method then provides for measuring actual velocity vectors of the robotic system in the configuration space. The control method then provides for determining an error velocity vector based on a difference between the actual velocity vector and the desired velocity vector given by the flow field corresponding to the current robot configuration. The control method then provides for applying a total control vector at the plurality of controllable joints, by the controller, based on the error velocity vector.

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for performing automated safety procedures for a robot. One of the methods includes receiving, by a robotic control system for a robot, a request to execute an automated safety procedure by a safety control subsystem for the robot. Each step of the automated safety procedure is iterated until an end of the automated safety procedure is reached, including if a step requires a new safety configuration, a respective safety configuration for the step is obtained and activated before performing one or more automatic actions for the step.

A humanoid robot control method, a mobile machine using the same, and a computer readable storage medium are provided. The method includes: mapping posture information of leg joints of a human body to leg joint servos of a humanoid robot to obtain an expected rotation angle and an expected rotation angular velocity of non-target optimized joint servos of the leg joint servos and an expected rotation angle and an expected rotation angular velocity of target optimized joint servos of the leg joint servos; obtaining an optimization objective function corresponding to the target optimized joint servos of the leg joint servos; optimizing the expected rotation angle and the expected rotation angular velocity of the target optimized joint servos to obtain a corrected expected rotation angle and a corrected expected rotation angular velocity of the target optimized joint servos; and controlling each of the leg joint servos of the humanoid robot.

A robot system includes one or more combinations of a driving section configured to receive supply of electric power and generate a rotation output of an output shaft and receive supply of a rotating force to the output shaft and generate electric power, a movable section moved by the rotation output, a detecting section configured to detect an angular position of the output shaft, resistor equipment coupled to the driving section, and a switch that can turn on and off coupling of the resistor equipment and the driving section and a control section configured to control the robot system. The control section can execute first braking control targeting the driving section to which the electric power is not supplied, the first braking control calculating speed of the rotation output of the driving section based on an output of the detecting section and causing the switch to turn on and off the coupling of the resistor equipment and the driving section at timing determined in a time-series manner according to target deceleration of the driving section and the speed of the rotation output.

A control device according to an aspect of the present disclosure is a control device for a robot that operates in a facility used by a user, and includes a detection information acquisition unit that acquires detection information of the user who is present in a preset area of the facility, and a control unit that controls the robot such that the robot operates at a speed equal to or lower than a set maximum operation speed based on the detection information of the user.

A control device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure includes: a completion time calculation unit that calculates the time a task is completed; a position acquisition unit that acquires position information of a user; an arrival time calculation unit that calculates the time the user arrives; an execution time acquisition unit that acquires information indicating a time slot for causing a robot to execute the task; a determination unit that determines whether the task is completed by the time the user arrives; and a control unit that controls the robot based on a determination result of the determination unit or the time slot for causing the robot to execute the task. The execution time acquisition unit acquires information indicating the time slot for causing the robot to execute the task for each robot of a plurality of robots or for each task of a plurality of tasks.

A control device according to an embodiment of the present disclosure is a control device for a robot that operates in a facility used by a user, and includes a state acquisition unit that acquires a biological state of the user, and a control unit that limits an operation of the robot when the biological state of the user is a sleep onset state. Here, when the biological state of the user is the sleep onset state, the control unit stops the operation of the robot or limits the operation of the robot to a set maximum operation speed or less.

A method for specifying a velocity of a robot manipulator, including: providing a database that has a data record for each of selected surface points on the manipulator, wherein each data record indicates, for each of possible stiffnesses and/or masses of an object in an environment of the manipulator, a safe normal velocity of each surface point, wherein the normal velocity is a component of the velocity vector of each surface point perpendicular to a surface of each surface point, detecting an actual stiffness and/or an actual mass of the object in the environment, assigning the actual stiffness and/or the actual mass to a normal velocity of a given data record for each surface point, and specifying a velocity for each surface point on a current or planned path of the manipulator, such that the velocity at each surface point is less than or equal to an assigned normal velocity.