Utilizing artificial skin for direct physical interaction

Focusing on the development of flexible robots for industrial and household environments, we identify intuitive teaching as the key feature and direct physical interaction and guidance as the most important interface. In the current work we introduce a multi redundant robotic assistant equipped with a touch sensitive skin around the upper- and the forearm, in order to incorporate contact forces into the arm control. A context-sensitive interpretation of the contact forces is being used to guide the attention of the robot, to avoid obstacles and to move the robot arm directly by the human operator.