A model-based strategy for safety assessment of a robot arm interacting with humans

Abstract Impact and the resulting contact forces can be determined by dynamic simulation once a validated model for the robot and of the contact area of the human is available. Methods for the identification of relevant geometric and dynamic parameters of the robot model are well established. While the experimental validation of constitutive models for human body contact is still topic of ongoing research, which gave rise to the ISO/TS 15066 guidelines, adequate models are already available for computational simulation of human-robot contact scenarios. However, dynamical simulations cannot be applied to exhaustively explore and assess all possible contact scenarios with the robot workspace. In this paper, first the model used for impact simulation is described and simulation as well experimental results are reported for contact at a predefined location. Then, the ability of the presented model to predict the measured contact force is discussed.