Designing the future of work is a goal that is currently being tackled by both industry and academia. In a scenario where we have Human-Robot hybrid teams, it will be necessary for both human and robots to be aware of each other in their respective tasks. This thesis explores how specific robots (cobots - collaborative robots) can use Computer Vision-based methods for awareness of a human's presence, while using this data to influence the cobot's own behaviour.
After explorations of the Computer Vision field in regards to this problem, and selected approaches in the domain of Human Awareness for Human-Robot Interaction in literature, this thesis presents a proof of concept software/hardware system that, given all the apriori findings, implements simple demos that demonstrate both the feasibility and the suitability of a pure vision-based system for the problem of human awareness. It then analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed system solution, ending with a road-map of recommendations for a following production prototype. ... Read more