Preprint

Modelling of Ultrawideband Propagation Scenarios for Safe Human-Robot Interaction in Warehouse Environment

Authors:
  • Ericsson Nikola Tesla d.d.
  • University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing
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Abstract

The paper presents an idealized warehouse environment where human and robots are both present and need to communicate to avoid mutual collisions. The warehouse shelves are modelled as metallic (PEC) parallelepipeds, which is the largest obstacle of practical interest, while for communication an UWB Gaussian signal at 3.994 GHz and 468 MHz width is used. The signal propagation is analyzed using ray tracing software, with the goal to determine the range of communication and the optimum antenna configurations. Several scenarios have been analyzed and discussed. It is found that the major influence on the communication range is exhibited by type of polarization of antennas placed on human and robot, while the optimum range is obtained when all the antennas are vertically polarized.

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Conference Paper
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With the substantial growth of logistics businesses the need for larger warehouses and their automation arises, thus using robots as assistants to human workers is becoming a priority. In order to operate efficiently and safely, robot assistants or the supervising system should recognize human intentions in real-time. Theory of Mind (ToM) is an intuitive human conception of other humans’ mental state, i.e., beliefs and desires, and how they cause behavior. In this paper we propose a ToM based human intention estimation algorithm for flexible robotized warehouses. We observe human’s, i.e., worker’s motion and validate it with respect to the goal locations using generalized Voronoi diagram based path planning. These observations are then processed by the proposed hidden Markov model framework which estimates worker intentions in an online manner, capable of handling changing environments. To test the proposed intention estimation we ran experiments in a real-world laboratory warehouse with a worker wearing Microsoft Hololens augmented reality glasses. Furthermore, in order to demonstrate the scalability of the approach to larger warehouses, we propose to use virtual reality digital warehouse twins in order to realistically simulate worker behavior. We conducted intention estimation experiments in the larger warehouse digital twin with up to 24 running robots. We demonstrate that the proposed framework estimates warehouse worker intentions precisely and in the end we discuss the experimental results.
Article
Contenido: Campos electromagnéticos, Propiedades eléctricas de la materia; La ecuación de onda y su solución; Polarización y propagación de ondas; Reflexión y trasmisión; Vectores potenciales auxiliares; Principios y teoremas electromagnéticos; Ondas rectilínea y cavidades; Ondas curvas y cavidades; Trasmisión de líneas esféricas y cavidades; Dispersión; Ecuaciones integrales y método de momento; Teoría geométrica de la difracción; Funciones de Green.
Human Intention Recognition in Flexible Robotized Warehouses based on Markov Decision Processes
  • T Petković
  • I Marković
  • I Petrović
T. Petković, I. Marković, I. Petrović, "Human Intention Recognition in Flexible Robotized Warehouses based on Markov Decision Processes," in Proceedings of Third Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT 2017), Seville (Spain), 2017.
UWB antenna research
  • B Ivšić
B. Ivšić, "UWB antenna research", internal report No. sLog-ANL-150/11-21570/2018, Končar-Electrical Engineering Institute Inc., Croatia, 2018