Collaborative robotic arms provide safety for humans to execute tasks in a shared workspace, by defining speed limits on the movement of the arm. Speed limiting reduces the momentum of the arm, so that in the event of an inadvertent collision with a human, the motion can be stopped quickly and the impact minimized. The low mass of the aluminum body of the arm is another factor that reduces the momentum.

Navigating the workspace with speed zones whilst maintaining task execution cycle, requires an interface that allows the definition of speed zones (that balances the safety of the speed zone with the penalty on motion time). Thus, the challenges are in segmenting the workspace and intuitive user interface to define the segments.

The expected outcome of this project by Systemantics is to develop a motion planning algorithm that respects speed limits within speed zones without excessively sacrificing motion times.

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree student from the relevant field

Familiarity and experience with any 2 of the following

– Kinematics and dynamics of a 6-DOF serial link robotic arms

– Variational calculus and optimization methods

– User interfaces of android smartphones.