Augmented reality safety zone configurations in human-robot collaboration: a user study

Close interaction with robots in Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) can increase worker productivity in production, but cages around the robot often limit this. Our research aims to visualise virtual safety zones around a real robot arm with Augmented Reality (AR), thereby replacing the cages. We tested our system with a collaborative pick-and-place application which mimics a real manufacturing scenario in an industrial robot cell. The shape, size and visualisation of the AR safety zones were tested with 19 participants. The overwhelming preference was for a visualisation that used cylindrical AR safety zones together with a virtual cage bars effect.