Effects of the Human Presence among Robots in the ARIAC 2023 Industria Automation Competition

Published

July 30, 2024

Author(s)

Leandro Buss Becker, Anthony Downs, Craig I. Schlenoff, Justin Albrecht, Zeid Kootbally, Angelo Ferrando, Rafael Cardoso, Michael Fisher

Abstract

The ''Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition'' (ARIAC) is an international robotic competition carried out in a simulated factory floor. ARIAC's competitors must perform assembly and kitting tasks by means of controlling four AGVs, one floor robot, and one ceiling (Gantry) robot in an attempt to overcome a range of agility challenges in the provided simulated environment based on ROS2 (Robot Operating System) and Gazebo. ARIAC's 2023 edition added a ''human'' agility challenge, which consists of having a human operator working among robots on the factory floor. This was motivated by the fact that while robots and automation play an increasingly significant role in modern manufacturing, there remains a symbiotic relationship between machines and humans. They should complement each other's strengths and cover each other's limitations, while also observing the required safety rules. For example, the ISO/TS 15066:2016 standard ''Robots and robotic devices -- Collaborative robots'' describes the required distances between humans and robots. The competitors cannot control the human operator, which is in fact controlled within the simulation environment using autonomous Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents. In this paper we analyse the effects of the human presence in ARIAC-2023 and perform a detailed analysis concerning how the three different personalities of the human operator affect the assembly tasks on the four different locations of the assembly stations. Given the way that the system is currently implemented, we realised that the level of influence of each personality is not as predictable as anticipated. We discuss why this can be a problem when considering real collaborative spaces among human and industrial robots, and the actions that can be done to mitigate the related problems.

Citation

Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems

Volume

110

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-024-02148-6

Local Download

Keywords

Human-robot collaboration, Human-robot interference evaluation, Factories of future, ROS-Gazebo BDI Agents

Citation

Buss Becker, L. , Downs, A. , Schlenoff, C. , Albrecht, J. , Kootbally, Z. , Ferrando, A. , Cardoso, R. and Fisher, M. (2024), Effects of the Human Presence among Robots in the ARIAC 2023 Industria Automation Competition, Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, [online], https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-024-02148-6, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=956969 (Accessed October 9, 2025)