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2014 | Buch

Towards Safe Robots

Approaching Asimov’s 1st Law

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Über dieses Buch

The vision of seamless human-robot interaction in our everyday life that allows for tight cooperation between human and robot has not become reality yet. However, the recent increase in technology maturity finally made it possible to realize systems of high integration, advanced sensorial capabilities and enhanced power to cross this barrier and merge living spaces of humans and robot workspaces to at least a certain extent. Together with the increasing industrial effort to realize first commercial service robotics products this makes it necessary to properly address one of the most fundamental questions of Human-Robot Interaction: How to ensure safety in human-robot coexistence?

In this authoritative monograph, the essential question about the necessary requirements for a safe robot is addressed in depth and from various perspectives. The approach taken in this book focuses on the biomechanical level of injury assessment, addresses the physical evaluation of robot-human impacts, and isolates the major factors that cause human injuries. This assessment is the basis for the design and exploration of various measures to improve safety in human-robot interaction. They range from control schemes for collision detection, reflex reaction, and avoidance to the investigation of novel joint designs that equip robots with fundamentally new capabilities. By the depth of its analysis and exceptionally salient experimental work, this monograph offers one of the most comprehensive treatments of the safety challenge in the field.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
Introduction
Abstract
For more than half a century it was predicted that robots will eventually interact and work closely with humans in diverse everyday environments as well as support them in industrial scenarios. However, despite large efforts in all major robotic fields, only recently have robots gained capabilities in both sensing and actuation, which may enable operation in the proximity of humans.
Sami Haddadin
State of the Art
Abstract
Human-Robot Interaction has become an important and intensive topic of research in the robotics community and is commonly divided into two major branches [1]:
1
cognitive and social Human-Robot Interaction (cHRI)
 
2
physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI)
 
The former combines such diverse disciplines as psychology, cognitive science, human-computer interfaces, human factors, and artificial intelligence with robotics.
Sami Haddadin
Soft-Robotics Control
Abstract
Accidental collisions that may harm humans should be avoided by anticipating dangerous situations. The effects of physical collisions should be mitigated by having the robot react promptly so as to recover a safe operative condition. In the pre-impact phase, collision avoidance is the primary goal and requires (at least, local) knowledge of the current environment geometry and computationally expensive motion planning techniques. Anticipating initiating collisions or recognizing them in realtime is typically based on the use of additional external sensors, such as sensitive skins [23], on-board vision [13], strain gauges and force load cells.
Sami Haddadin
Biomechanics and Forensics
Abstract
In this monograph, various injury measures from biomechanics and forensics are used for analyzing human injury in robotics. In order to give the full picture, an overview on the most important existing injury classification metrics and biomechanical injury measures is given in this chapter.
Sami Haddadin
Crash-Testing in Robotics
Abstract
Ensuring safety leads to various aspects ranging from preventing electrical threats to coping with human mistakes. Up to now, this monograph focused on developing different methods for collision avoidance, detection, and reaction, i.e. to equip the robot with reactive motion control capabilities to appropriately react to environmental changes and unforeseen collisions. In this chapter however, the focus is on various aspects of physical human-robot contact and their related injury potential. In Figure 5.1 a first overview on relevant contact scenarios which potentially lead to human injury is given.
Sami Haddadin
Sharp and Acute Contact
Abstract
Up to now, only blunt impacts were addressed in this monograph (see Fig. 6.2 (left)), leaving open the question of what can happen if a robot with an attached sharp tool can impact with a human, see Fig. 6.2 (right). If robots are supposed to work and help in a useful manner they must be able to handle potentially dangerous tools and equipment. Tasks may range from slicing bread (see Fig. 6.1) or preparing some meal to fulfilling duties of a craftsman.
Sami Haddadin
Reactive Pre-collision Strategies
Abstract
From a control point of view this monograph dealt to a large extent with physical collisions, their detection and following reaction up to now. Apart from such physical analysis and control, immanent injury can be diminished if the robot is able to reduce its impact speed or change its moving direction prior to the collision. Locally, the robot would circumvent the human or obstacle and avoid the impact completely. Therefore, it is of major importance to provide flexible motion generation methods, which take into account the possibly complex environment structure and at the same time can react quickly to changing conditions.
Sami Haddadin
Towards the Robotic Co-worker
Abstract
Various human-friendly motion control methods were presented and analyzed. These are independently useful tools for numerous applications as they open up entirely new robot behaviors. However, due to their complex interrelationship in this chapter it is discussed how to integrate the presented methods into a more general hybrid state-based control architecture. Even though the focus is on robotic co-workers, the elaborated schemes are also applicable to service robots. The implementation of such a sensor-based robotic co-worker that brings robots closer to humans in industrial settings and achieve close cooperation is currently a challenging goal in robotics.
Sami Haddadin
Competitive Robotics
Abstract
The monograph dealt to a large extent with currently open problems, which are important for both robotics industry and standardization organizations. In the present chapter topics are discussed, which are relevant in the more distant future while at the same time being tightly interrelated with a very recent topic of robotics research:
Sami Haddadin
Intrinsic Joint Compliance
Abstract
Human-friendly robots are usually characterized either by active compliance control or intrinsically compliant behavior. Active compliance control has already reached a mature stage and recently went to market. Intrinsic compliance on the other hand is currently investigated in several large European projects and other research projects worldwide. Due to the significant increase in mechanical design complexity, the additional degrees of freedom needed for adjusting stiffness and related questions regarding control, there are still several open issues to be addressed in order to validate the VIA concept. DLR is currently developing an integrated hand-arm system [1, 13], which will be fully equipped with variable stiffness actuation, see Fig. 10.1.
Sami Haddadin
Considerations for New Robot Standards
Abstract
In pHRI there is the natural demand for a clear set of standards that provide a reliable basis on which manufacturers can rely on. The introduced ISO safety standard ISO-10218 for direct human-robot collaboration suggests limitations of the speed, power, and force of the robot. However, these limitations do not concisely correspond to the risks and level of potential human injuries. Therefore they are often over conservative and/or in other situations not conservative enough, making a more elaborated safety model necessary. If a new standard proposal is not developed, severe risks for serious injuries remain on the one hand, and the standard will be over restrictive in many cases on the other hand, hampering the application of human-robot collaboration.
Sami Haddadin
Conclusion and Outlook
Conclusion
Achieving safe Human-Robot Interaction is one of the grand challenges of robotics. It is necessary to design systems that do not harm human beings during operation. However, due to the lack of real world applications for pHRI, there was very little research on how to assess, rate, and improve the safety of robots for tasks with direct human contact. Mostly, the term safe was used to label dependable robotic components, for which failure rate has to be minimized and reliability to be maximized. In this sense, the monograph gives the first large scale investigation of possible injuries a human would suffer from collisions with robots and elaborates the significant factors in this complex problem.
Sami Haddadin
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Towards Safe Robots
verfasst von
Sami Haddadin
Copyright-Jahr
2014
Verlag
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Electronic ISBN
978-3-642-40308-8
Print ISBN
978-3-642-40307-1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40308-8

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