Ricerc@Sapienza

A control system based on multiple sensors is proposed for the safe collaboration of a robot with a human. New constrained and contactless human-robot coordinated motion tasks are defined to control the robot end-effector so as to maintain a desired relative position to the human head while pointing at it. Simultaneously, the robot avoids any collision with the operator and with nearby static or dynamic obstacles, based on distance compu- tations performed in the depth space of a RGB-D sensor.

The paper deals with the long history of the word robot and related
terms throughout the European languages. Robot, a word invented
by the Czech writer Karel Čapek, nowadays is at the very heart of
the Western imagery, both in movies and literary creations, since the
first Asimov stories published during the forties of the past century.
The modern fictional and technological scenarios describe many
types of robots, thus spreading many new nouns. This is also a history
of dreams and nightmares, of machines conceived and created by