Energy Tank-based Control Framework for Satisfying the ISO/TS 15066 Constraint

The technical specification ISO/TS 15066 provides the foundational elements for assessing the safety of collaborative human-robot cells, which are the cornerstone of the modern industrial paradigm. The standard implementation of the ISO/TS 15066 procedure, however, often results in conservative motions of the robot, with consequently low performance of the cell. In this paper, we propose an energy tank-based approach that allows to directly satisfy the energetic bounds imposed by the ISO/TS 15066, thus avoiding the introduction of conservative modeling and assumptions. The proposed approach has been successfully validated in simulation.