Injury evaluation of human-robot impacts

Abstract

Currently, large efforts are undertaken to bring robotic applications to domestic environments. Especially physical human-robot cooperation is a major concern and various design and control methodologies were developed on the way to achieve this task. In particular, this necessitates the evaluation of injury risks a human is exposed to in case he is hit by a robot. In this video several blunt impact tests are shown, leading to an assessment of which factors dominate injury severity. We will illustrate the effect robot speed, robot mass, and constraints in the environment have on safety in human- robot impacts. It will be shown that the intuition of high impact loads being transmitted by heavy robots is wrong. Furthermore, the conclusion is induced that free impacts are by far less dangerous than being crushed.