用概率预测提升人机交互安全性,动态调整防护距离。
Uncertainty Aware-Predictive Control Barrier Functions: Safer Human Robot Interaction through Probabilistic Motion Forecasting
- 融合概率运动预测与控制屏障函数,动态调整安全边界。
- 实测显示交互中机器人安全区域违规次数显著降低。
- 适合需高安全又灵活的人机协作场景,如产线装配。
为在人与机器人共享工作空间的场景中实现灵活、高通量自动化,协作机器人必须在严格安全约束与响应性行为之间取得平衡。人类动作的随机性和任务依赖性是主要挑战:若机器人仅采用纯反应式或最坏情况防护,将导致不必要的制动和任务停滞,破坏人机交互的流畅性。近年来基于学习的人类动作预测快速发展,但多数方法生成的是最坏情况预测,且对预测不确定性缺乏结构化处理,导致规划算法过于保守,限制灵活性。本文提出不确定性感知的预测性控制屏障函数(UA-PCBFs),将概率性人体手部运动预测与控制屏障函数的形式化安全保证相融合。相比其他方法,该框架可利用预测模块提供的不确定性估计动态调整安全裕度。得益于不确定性估计,UA-PCBFs使协作机器人更深入理解未来人类状态,从而通过智能运动规划实现更流畅、更智能的交互。我们在真实世界中进行了多层次验证实验,包括可重复动作的自动装置测试及直接人机交互测试,涵盖动作响应速度、可用性与人类信心等维度。相较于现有先进人机交互架构,UA-PCBFs在关键任务指标上表现更优,显著减少了交互过程中机器人进入安全禁区的违规次数。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
To enable flexible, high-throughput automation in settings where people and robots share workspaces, collaborative robotic cells must reconcile stringent safety guarantees with the need for responsive and effective behavior. A dynamic obstacle is the stochastic, task-dependent variability of human motion: when robots fall back on purely reactive or worst-case envelopes, they brake unnecessarily, stall task progress, and tamper with the fluidity that true Human-Robot Interaction demands. In recent years, learning-based human-motion prediction has rapidly advanced, although most approaches produce worst-case scenario forecasts that often do not treat prediction uncertainty in a well-structured way, resulting in over-conservative planning algorithms, limiting their flexibility. We introduce Uncertainty-Aware Predictive Control Barrier Functions (UA-PCBFs), a unified framework that fuses probabilistic human hand motion forecasting with the formal safety guarantees of Control Barrier Functions. In contrast to other variants, our framework allows for dynamic adjustment of the safety margin thanks to the human motion uncertainty estimation provided by a forecasting module. Thanks to uncertainty estimation, UA-PCBFs empower collaborative robots with a deeper understanding of future human states, facilitating more fluid and intelligent interactions through informed motion planning. We validate UA-PCBFs through comprehensive real-world experiments with an increasing level of realism, including automated setups (to perform exactly repeatable motions) with a robotic hand and direct human-robot interactions (to validate promptness, usability, and human confidence). Relative to state-of-the-art HRI architectures, UA-PCBFs show better performance in task-critical metrics, significantly reducing the number of violations of the robot's safe space during interaction with respect to the state-of-the-art.
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