Safety Evaluation of Physical Human-Robot Interaction via Crash-Testing

The light-weight robots developed at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) are characterized by their low inertial properties, torque sensing in each joint and a load to weight ratio similar to humans. These properties qualify them for applications requiring high mobility and direct interaction with human users or uncertain environments. An essential requirement for such a robot is that it must under no circumstances pose a threat to the human operator. To actually quantify the potential injury risk emanating from the manipulator, impact test were carried out using standard automobile crash-test facilities at the German Automobile Club ADAC. In our evaluation we focused on unexpected rigid frontal impacts, i.e. injuries caused by sharp edges are excluded. Several injury mechanisms and so called Severity Indices are evaluated and discussed with respect to their adaptability to physical human-robotic interaction.