“Human-In-The-Loop”- Virtual Commissioning of Human-Robot Collaboration Systems

Human-robot collaboration (HRC) has the potential to increase the degree of automation, and thus productivity, throughout many industries. However, complex safety considerations and a lack of appropriate planning tools still prohibit a more widespread application. In this paper, the use of virtual commissioning (VC), an established tool for the validation of common automated systems, for the validation of HRC-systems is proposed. For this, the structure of a traditional VC environment is combined with a digital human model (DHM). To ensure adequate behavioral fidelity, a real-time overlay of human action and the virtual automated system, using motion capture technology, is imperative. This also requires the live visualization of the simulation environment via virtual reality (VR). The structure of such a simulation system is presented and evaluated. Furthermore, the cost and benefit for this new method is contrasted.