ERICA - Evaluating human-robot interaction and cooperation based on analysis of 3D image sequences

The ERICA experiment has the goal to achieve safe human-robot-cooperation and to advance a system which is based on real time estimation of significant parameters of human body kinematics. The knowledge about parts of the human kinematics is a key issue for cognitive vision based systems, which deal with real cooperation between man and machine. This knowledge is also used to guarantee safety for the human co-worker by estimating the risk of a situation and adapting the robot‘s behaviour accordingly.

The experimental evaluation is based on different scenarios, covering categories like classical work tasks, synchronous robot control by the co-worker and gesture recognition for interaction as well as scene understanding for cooperation. Together with Reis Robotics and KUKA the experiments will be carried out and guided by their experience in industrial robotic applications.