Although the concept of industrial cobots dates back to 1999, most present day hybrid human-machine assembly systems are merely weight compensators. Here, we present results on the development of a collaborative human-robot manufacturing cell for homokinetic joint assembly. The robot alternates active and passive behaviours during assembly, to lighten the burden on the operator in the first cas...

When humans and robots work in close proximity, physical interaction is inevitable. Traditionally, robots treat physical interaction as a disturbance, and resume their original behavior after the interaction ends. In contrast, we argue that physical human interaction is informative: it is useful information about how the robot should be doing its task. We formalize learning from such interactio...

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted key challenges for patient care and health provider safety. Adaptable robotic systems, with enhanced sensing, manipulation autonomy capabilities could help address these in future infectious disease outbreaks.

Unanticipated physical actions from the robot on humans [active human–robot interaction (pHRI)] may be inevitable with deployment of robots in human-populated environments. However, it is still unclear how would perceive such and should execute them a physically psychologically safe manner. The objective this article to explore possibility quantifying humans’ mental state during a...

Accurate prediction of human movements is required to enhance the efficiency physical human–robot interaction. Behavioral differences across various users are crucial factors that limit motion. Although recent neural network-based modeling methods have improved their accuracy, most did not consider an effective adaptations different users, thereby employing same model parameters for all users. ...

This chapter examines the physical interaction between two humans and between a human and a robot simulating a human in the absence of all other modes of interaction, such as visual and verbal. Generally, when asked, people prefer to work alone on tasks requiring accuracy. However, as demonstrated by the research in this chapter, when individuals are placed in teams requiring physical cooperati...

Handshaking is a fundamental part of human physical interaction that is transversal to various cultural backgrounds. It is also a very challenging task in the field of Physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI), requiring compliant force control in order to plan for the arm’s motion and a confident but at the same time pleasant grasp of the human user’s hand based on tactile sensing. In this paper...