Session overview physical human-robot integration and haptics

Abstract

Machines and robots in the near future will share environments, and often come directly in touch with humans. This is to happen in several applications domains, including domestic applications (domotics), entertainment, assistance, cooperative manipulation tasks, teleoperation, human augmentation, haptic interfaces and exoskeletons. Physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI) poses many challenges, which can be summarized by the dichotomy safety vs. performance. The first and foremost concern, indeed, is that the robot must not hurt humans, directly nor indirectly, in regular operations nor in failures. Second, the machine is expected to perform swiftly and effectively its tasks in the service to humans.