Advanced Robotics

Salvini, Pericle; Laschi, Cecilia

doi: 10.1163/016918610X527158pmid: N/A

Lee, Suwoong; Yamada, Yoji

doi: 10.1163/016918610X527167pmid: N/A

Power assist systems are expected to bring many benefits in various fields, and some of them have already been introduced in the welfare and manufacturing industries. As power assist systems demand manual contact with a human operator, it is important to prevent hazards that originate from system faults. The objectives of this paper are to introduce a strategy on safety function implementation by means of a case study for a power assist system and to propose an approach for safety function design. This paper describes details of the strategy for Skill-Assist — the power assist system adopted as the experimental platform. First, the safety integrity level (SIL) required for Skill-Assist was determined, following which top-down and bottom-up risk assessments were conducted. A safety-related system (SRS) with a fail-safe fault detection device and dual-channel voting architecture was then constructed based on the risk assessment result. A functional safety analysis was performed for the SRS and we found that the SRS satisfied the required SIL. An experiment on the functionality of the SRS was performed and we verified the safety function for Skill-Assist set by the proposed strategy.

Qian, Kun; Ma, Xudong; Dai, Xianzhong; Fang, Fang

doi: 10.1163/016918610X527176pmid: N/A

The human-symbiotic service robot raises new safety issues for autonomous navigation in the presence of people. Traditional obstacle-avoidance algorithms that do not differentiate between people and other objects in the environment may fail to secure human safety in both physical and mental aspects. In this paper, a framework for designing active and human-compliant navigation behaviors is proposed, in which a set of safety strategies is put forward to guarantee human physical safety and mental comfort. Based on a questionnaire study, several important pre-collision safety criteria are selected according to the subjects' interpretation in terms of social acceptability. These criteria are characterized quantitively and computed before being integrated into a unified cost grid for safe motion control. These safety strategies not only explore collision-free paths, but also incorporate social conventions into robot navigational behaviors, which will significantly improves humans' safety feeling, regarding the robot's understandable, predictable and polite behaviors. Moreover, a human-compliant robot navigation system for home-care applications is implemented and described in detail. By utilizing the system, a series of experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the method in producing safe and friendly behaviors in different scenarios. The results of the navigation experiments and the human–robot interaction trials validate the effectiveness of the proposed method as well as the participants' subjective preference to the proposed human-compliant navigational behaviors.

Mohan, Rajesh Elara; Wijesoma, Wijerupage Sardha; Acosta Calderon, Carlos A.; Zhou, Changjiu

doi: 10.1163/016918610X527185pmid: N/A

Human–robot teams combining the complementary capabilities of robots and humans towards solving potentially complex service tasks are gaining widespread popularity. Many of these tasks will involve close interactions between the robot and the human it serves, thereby making safety a crucial parameter. Erroneous interactions that inevitably arises between the human and the robot cause accidents in service robotic applications. Currently, there are no metrics available in the human–robot interaction community for analyzing erroneous interactions. In this paper, we put forward a new class of false alarm metrics to define, classify and quantify the effects of erroneous interactions in human robot teams, and explore the relationship between false alarms and safety in service robots. We extend the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve commonly used in the signal processing community to classify robots based on their associated risks. We also show the utility of the designed false alarm metrics and extended ROC curve by applying them to a service robot, Robo-Erectus@Home, across tele-operation and semi-autonomous modes of autonomy.

Kelley, Richard; Schaerer, Enrique; Gomez, Micaela; Nicolescu, Monica

doi: 10.1163/016918610X527194pmid: N/A

As service robots become increasingly common in society, so too will accidents involving service robots. Current law functions effectively to adjudicate the disputes that arise from such accidents, but as technology improves and robot autonomy grows, it will become much harder to apply currently existing laws. Instead, new legal frameworks will have to be developed to address questions of liability in human–robot interaction. We have already proposed the framework 'Robots as Animals', in which robots are analogized to domesticated animals for legal purposes in disputes about liability. In our initial presentation, though, we focused exclusively on the common law in the US Federal Government. In this paper, we examine the laws concerning domesticated animals in countries in Europe, Asia and North America. We apply the lessons learned from our analysis to build an expanded framework that better reflects the established norms of several nations, and more explicitly balances the competing interests of producers and consumers of robot technology. We also provide examples of ways in which our new framework may be applied.

Sanfeliu, Alberto; Llácer, Maria Rosa; Gramunt, Maria Dolors; Punsola, Albert; Yoshimura, Yuji

doi: 10.1163/016918610X527202pmid: N/A

In this paper we analyze how the privacy issue will affect the deployment and design of networking robots in European urban areas. Privacy means the way to guarantee self control on private data that can be processed by networked robots. We start by analyzing the technical capabilities of networked robots in public and private spaces, the legal framework and technical solutions. Then, we present the main European Directives and how they affect networked robots. Next, we discuss the legal criteria for privacy compliance, analyzing the surveillance utilities and the wireless communication systems. We also discuss the current legal framework for ubiquitous computing and analyze the anonymous processing for mobility management purposes using a Bluetooth scanning sensor. Finally, we present some open questions.

Salvini, Pericle; Teti, Giancarlo; Spadoni, Enza; Frediani, Emiliano; Boccalatte, Silvio; Nocco, Luca; Mazzolai, Barbara; Laschi, Cecilia; Comandé, Giovanni; Rossi, Emanuele; Carrozza, Paolo; Dario, Paolo

doi:

Weng, Yueh-Hsuan

doi: 10.1163/016918610X527220pmid: N/A

As robots are increasingly integrated into human society, associated problems will resemble or merge with those in other fields — we can refer to this phenomenon as the 'robot sociability problem'. In this paper, the author first analyzes the dynamic relationship between robot ethics, robotics and robot law, and then proposes a 'practical robots' approach for solving the robot sociability problem. As this approach is based on legal regulations, the author posits that a functional platform such as a 'legislative consortium for social robotics' is crucial at the initial stage for social robotics development. In conclusion, the author discusses how a legislative consortium for social robotics will be a useful approach for solving the robot sociability problem, especially emerging structural legislative problems that are related to autonomous robots.