About this Research Topic

Background

Human-robot collaboration (HRC) is a key enabling technology of the Industry 4.0 transition and is changing the industrial work paradigm. At the same time, we see robots spreading across a large number of activities, assisting and interacting with humans at different levels. In general, human-robot interaction (HRI) is evolving, becoming closer and often featuring physical interaction, thus paving the way for a new era with a wide range of robots and robotic devices. With this perspective, safety issues related to HRI become more visible and are even more critical when non-expert users are involved. Thus, safety issues potentially represent a barrier to achieving full robotic performance in HRC implementations.


The goal of this Research Topic is to address the safety issues arising in HRC implementations, in which the contact between humans and robots is either envisaged or avoided without the use of physical barriers.

In the industrial environment, contact prevention without barriers and fences relies on the implementation of advanced sensing systems and control strategies; contact hazards must be detected - possibly predicted - and mitigated. The coordination of humans and robots has to comply with ergonomic principles in order to avoid physical and mental stress and, aiming at synergic collaboration, even psychological barriers must be broken down.

These issues are analogue to those affecting the majority of service robots, which, on a general basis, are also often interacting with humans during their deployment. The same holds true for the medical and healthcare domain, in which robots are increasingly introduced into clinical practice, working hand-in-hand with patients and operators.
The following scenarios fall within the scope of the Topic: industrial HRC applications, workspace sharing with mobile robots, robots and exoskeletons for rehabilitation, compensation and alleviation, professional and personal care service robots. The focus is on the role of safety in all the application life-cycle phases, from requirement analysis to validation and operation.



The Topic covers research and studies related to technological aspects aimed at improving safety in close HRI, but also innovative approaches and perspectives for risk assessment, verification and validation of applications, and emerging cognitive technologies for interaction. Relevant topics for this collection include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Intrinsic safety of collaborative applications – design and validation;
• Design and deployment of safe collaborative applications;
• Approaches and algorithms for speed and separation monitoring;
• Safety in physical HRI – modeling and assessment;
• Modelling of the human body and biomechanical limits for safe physical HRI;
• Safety and ergonomics in the use of exoskeletons and wearable robots – issues, solutions, assessment;
• Design of safe cobots and exoskeletons;
• Minimizing risks in the use of rehabilitation robots;
• New approaches for risk assessment in robotic applications;
• Applications of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to increase safety in HRI;
• Verification and validation methods, measuring equipment;
• Augmented and Virtual Reality applications towards safe HRI;
• Advanced sensors for safe HRI;
• Multi-modal human-robot interfaces and emerging technologies for HRI;
• Modeling, measuring and supporting physical and cognitive ergonomics in HRC.

Keywords: Safety in close human-robot interaction

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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