11. Designing the Robot Behavior for Safe Human–Robot Interactions

Recent advances in robotics suggest that human–robot interaction (HRI) is no longer a fantasy, but is happening in various fields such as industrial robots, autonomous vehicles, and medical robots. Human safety is one of the biggest concerns in HRI. As humans will respond to the robot’s movement, interactions need to be considered explicitly by the robot. A systematic approach to design the robot behavior toward safe HRI is discussed in this chapter. By modeling the interactions in a multiagent framework, the safety issues are understood as conflicts in the multiagent system. By mimicking human’s social behavior, the robot’s behavior is constrained by the ‘no-collision’ social norm and the uncertainties it perceives for human motions. An efficient action is then found within the constraints. Both analysis and human-involved simulation verify the effectiveness of the method.