Abstract: A safety system for use in robotics includes a plurality sensors, preferably a heterogeneous set of commercial off the shelf sensors, and at least one processor that assesses an operational state of the sensors, validates a system status based on the assessed operational states of the sensors to determine whether sufficient sensors are operable to provide a safety certified system, and monitors an operational environment for violations of safety rules that specify rules regarding proximity of humans to robots. A control system for use in robotics includes at least one processor that performs motion planning taking into account safety monitor rules implemented by the safety system to thereby reduce triggering of stoppages, slowdowns or precautionary occlusions by the safety system.

Abstract: A layout of a robotic operational environment is optimized to at least reduce or minimize occlusion of one or more sensors, to improve computational efficiency of motion planning, and/or improve an efficiency and/or robustness of generated motions plans. A respective sensor pose (i.e., positioned and oriented) for one or more sensors may be determined while taking into account the various robot poses of the robot(s) and transitions between robot poses. For instance, cost values that represent occlusion may be determined, and candidate sensor poses evaluated based on cost values or aggregated cost. The total number of sensors to be employed may not be known before execution, and in fact may be determined only after several iterations, upon reaching a termination condition (e.g., task completion time). Sensors make take any variety of forms, e.g., digital camera, radar, LIDAR, sonar, passive infrared (PIR) motion detector.

Abstract: A safety system for use in robotics includes a plurality sensors, preferably a heterogeneous set of commercial off the shelf sensors, and at least one processor that assesses an operational state of the sensors, validates a system status based on the assessed operational states of the sensors to determine whether sufficient sensors are operable to provide a safety certified system, and monitors an operational environment for violations of safety rules that specify rules regarding proximity of humans to robots. A control system for use in robotics includes at least one processor that performs motion planning taking into account safety monitor rules implemented by the safety system to thereby reduce triggering of stoppages, slowdowns or precautionary occlusions by the safety system.