An atlas of physical human–robot interaction

A broad spectrum of issues have to be addressed in order to tackle the problem of a safe and dependable physical Human–Robot Interaction (pHRI). In the immediate future, metrics related to safety and dependability have to be found in order to successfully introduce robots in everyday enviornments. While there are certainly also “cognitive” issues involved, due to the human perception of the robot (and vice versa), and other objective metrics related to fault detection and isolation, our discussion focuses on the peculiar aspects of “physical” interaction with robots. In particular, safety and dependability are the underlying evaluation criteria for mechanical design, actuation, and control architectures. Mechanical and control issues are discussed with emphasis on techniques that provide safety in an intrinsic way or by means of control components. Attention is devoted to dependability, mainly related to sensors, control architectures, and fault handling and tolerance. Suggestions are provided to draft metrics for evaluating safety and dependability in pHRI, and references to the works of the scientific groups involved in the pHRI research complete the study. The present atlas is a result of the EURON perspective research project “Physical Human–Robot Interaction in anthropic DOMains (PHRIDOM)”, aimed at charting the new territory of pHRI, and constitutes the scientific basis for the ongoing STReP project “Physical Human–Robot Interaction: depENDability and Safety (PHRIENDS)”, aimed at developing key components for the next generation of robots, designed to share their environment with people.