Safety Standard Advancement Toward Mobile Robot Use Near Humans

Abstract — As mobile robots have increasingly improved onboard intelligence, they are being used in more flexible manufacturing, warehouse and/or military environments where humans may intervene and interact with these robots frequently causing increased hazards. The US ASME B56.5- 2004 Safety Standard for industrial trucks was recently changed and now more closely meets the existing British EN 1525- 1998 Safety Standard for driverless industrial trucks by allowing the use of non-contact safety sensors. Standard-size, material-covered objects, resembling human limb (arm and leg) lengths and diameters positioned in vertical and horizontal orientations, respectively and located within the vehicle path, must be detected and allow the vehicle to react before the vehicle frame contacts these objects. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) supports the automated guided vehicle industry to not only promote advancement of the ASME standard to use non-contact safety sensors but, to also provide performance evaluation of new 3D real-time range sensor technology toward implementing and further advancing these standards. This paper will provide details of: the US and British safety standards, a new 3D range camera, sensor experiments with ground truth comparison, and obstacle detection and segmentation algorithms and results, and provide further safety standard advancement recommendations to protect humans as they work near mobile robots. Index Terms—ASME B56.5 safety standard, British EN1525 safety standard, 3D range camera, human-robot interaction