Collision Testing for Human-Robot Collaboration

Human-robot collaboration can include physical contact between the human and the moving robot. Thus, the contact itself must be understood in detail, so as to consider it properly in a risk assessment. The approach pursued in the EU-FP7 project ROSETTA is toward gaining understanding of low-level mechanical impacts on parts of the human body through use and further development of finite-element models of the human body parts. Such models must be verified against physical measurements, but direct measurements on human subjects are not an option. Instead, a reference test setup has been developed to characterize robot impacts on an instrumented arrangement with defined inertial and compliant properties. Simulations of the test setup serve to verify the tool chain used and can subsequently be seen to validate and calibrate the results of simulations of impacts on the human body. The test setup used is presented and preliminary results are shown and discussed to draw initial conclusions and to determine the need for additional data taking.