An increasing number of studies indicate that robots are the most hazardous equipment in industry. The very virtue that makes them attractive for industrial work, the programmable arm, is the cause of accidents since the arm motion is often difficult to perceive. The present paper presents a model of human reaction time and emergency behavior. The total reaction time is the sum of three elements: perception, decision making and motor response. Each of these three elements are modeled using concepts such as perceptual discriminability and single detection theory. Finally the results of an experiment is presented where the human reaction time is modeled as a function of robot arm speed.
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