PHRIENDS

Such machines have to meet the strictest safety standards, yet also to deliver useful performance: this poses new challenges to the design of all components of the robot, including mechanics, control, planning algorithms and supervision systems. We propose an integrated approach to the co-design of robots for safe physical interaction with humans, which revolutionizes the classical approach for designing industrial robots – rigid design for accuracy, active control for safety – by creating a new paradigm: design robots that are intrinsically safe, and control them to deliver performance. Although the scope of this project cannot encompass the integration of complete robot systems, PHRIENDS will create and deliver new actuator concepts and prototypes, new dependable algorithms for supervision and planning, new control algorithms for handling safe human-robot physical interaction and for fault-tolerant behaviour, and will integrate these components in meaningful subsystems for experimental testing, quantitative evaluation and optimization. The project will also contribute significantly to the ongoing effort of international bodies towards the establishment of new standards for collaborative human-robot operation.