Towards intelligent industrial co-robots

In modern factories, human workers and robots are two major workforces. For safety concerns, the two are normally separated with robots confined in metal cages, which limits the productivity as well as the flexibility of production lines. In recent years, attention has been directed to remove the cages so that human workers and robots may collaborate to create a human-robot co-existing factory. Manufacturers are interested in combining human's flexibility and robot's productivity in flexible production lines. The potential benefits of industrial co-robots are huge and extensive, e.g. they may be placed in human-robot teams in flexible production lines, where robot arms and human workers cooperate in handling workpieces, and automated guided vehicles (AGV) co-inhabit with human workers to facilitate factory logistics.