A REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ON HUMAN ROBOT SYSTEM SITUATIONS ANDTHEIR DESIGN IMPLICATIONS

The literature on robot-related accidents clearly shows that the great est risk of accidents occurs during programming and/or maintenance, ti mes when the individual is within the operating envelope of the robot. The circumstance of the accidents and incidents reported has frequent ly involved an unexpected robot movement which was caused by equipment failure or human error. The need for human factors research on human- robot interface safety and productivity has been widely reported in th e literature. Unfortunately, the number of actual studies of human per formance in man-robot systems is comparatively small. A search of the literature revealed only 11 such studies. The goal of this article is to briefly describe and synthesize the experimental results generated in the human factors studies, make recommendations to improve the safe ty of the persons working in the vicinity of industrial robots, and to propose future research avenues in this area. (C) 1995 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.