Development of a Hydraulic System for the Mitigation of End-Effector Collisions

The increasing number of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the adoption of collaborative robots in the industry are rising the necessity for the development of systems and algorithms able to detect and mitigate collisions. These are due to the probabilistic nature of AI applications and the environment. Indeed, an AI can perform poorly in unpredictable scenarios, and a cobot may face a distracted operator. These scenarios result in an unsafe situation where the robot impacts with its external environment. Solutions must be developed to mitigate these impacts with obstacles and manipulated objects. This paper presents a hydraulic module to be interposed between the end-effector and the robot flange. This module decouples the end-effector from the robot along the approach axis of the end-effector, thus mitigating the effects of accidental collisions occurring in such direction. Numerical results show the pros and cons of the new system.