Sharework project partners from CNR- ISTC (Andrea Orlandini), CNR- STIIMA (Marco Faroni) and Fraunhofer (Mohamad Bdiwi) have participated in the 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2022), held on 29th August-2nd September in the Royal Continental Hotel and Meeting Centre in Naples (Italy).
Within the event, they organised a special session entitled “Safe Human-robot Cooperation and Collaboration in manufacturing environments”, whose purpose was to explore how cooperation and collaboration between humans and robots can work in a safe and acceptable way, fostering their integration on industrial scenarios, one of the most promising application areas for cobots.
The session focused on critical challenges for cobots that need to be addressed in order to enable their effective and sustainable deployment in real-world operational settings. These challenges include a safe interaction, intuitive interfaces or the designing of methods, among others.
Moreover, two scientific papers based on Sharework research were presented during the special session. The article “Human-Robot Co-Manipulation of Soft Materials: Enable a Robot Manual Guidance Using a Depth Map Feedback”, contributed by partners from CNR, proposes using a 3D camera to track the deformation of soft materials for human-robot co-manipulation.
The other one, entitled “Fusion of Depth, Color, and Thermal Images towards Digital Twins and Safe Human Interaction with a Robot in an Industrial Environment”, has been participated by partners from Fraunhofer IWU and details the results of a new algorithm developed to fuse thermal, depth, and colour information.
The RO-MAN 2022 conference has been a leading forum where state-of-the-art innovative results, the latest developments as well as future perspectives relating to robot and human interactive communication were presented and discussed.