Human intention based physical support robot system in assembling work - extraction of behaviour support trigger from `Work Triangle'

In order to realize human co-operative machinery, the machine's ability of understanding human intention becomes an important issue. This paper proposes a method of extracting human intention from the shape of Work Triangle, which consists of head, and hands of the human. A system, which samples the Work Triangle during assembly work by vision sensors, was constructed. With the system, the patterns of the Work Triangle of different skilled subjects were sampled. A kohonen neural network was used for categorizing the patterns of the Work Triangle. The categorized patterns between skilled and unskilled subjects were examined. The patterns, which only appear in unskilled subjects, were extracted as states of `Needing support'. A physical support prototype system, which carries out supports by the `Needing support' state, was constructed.