Collaborative industrial robot cells are becoming more and more interesting for industry through the new Industrie 4.0 initiative. In this paper we report early work on motion-based interaction with industrial robots. Human motion is tracked by a Kinect camera and translated into robot code. A group of tests subjects are asked to interact with the system and their activities are observed. Lessons learned on interaction challenges in a robot cell are reported.

In this paper, early work on how to implement flexible safety zones is presented. In the case study an industrial robot cell emulates the environment at a wall construction site, with a robot performing nailing routines. Tests are performed with humans entering the safety zones of a SafetyEye system. The zone violation is detected, and new warning zones initiated. The robot retracts but continues its work tasks with reduced speed and within a safe distance of the human operator. Interaction is achieved through simultaneous work on the same work piece and the warning zones can be initiated and adjusted in a flexible way.