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A Survey on the Pain Threshold and Its Use in Robotics Safety Standards

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Robotics and Well-Being

Part of the book series: Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering ((ISCA,volume 95))

Abstract

Physical contact between humans and robots is becoming more common, for example with personal care robots, in human–robot collaborative tasks, or with social robots. Traditional safety standards in robotics have emphasised separation between humans and robots, but physical contact now becomes part of a robot’s normal function. This motivates new requirements, beyond safety standards that deal with the avoidance of contact and prevention of physical injury, to handle the situation of expected contact combined with the avoidance of pain. This paper reviews the physics and characteristics of human–robot contact, and summarises a set of key references from the pain literature, relevant for the definition of robotics safety standards.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Yoji Yamada and members of ISO TC 199/WG 12 for motivating discussion for the survey in this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH, Zürich, Switzerland

    A. Mylaeus & R. Siegwart

  2. Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH, Zürich, Switzerland

    A. Vempati

  3. BSI Consumer and Public Interest Unit UK, Chiswick High Rd, Chiswick, London, UK

    B. Tranter

  4. Disney Research, Zürich, Switzerland

    A. Vempati & P. Beardsley

Authors
  1. A. Mylaeus
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  2. A. Vempati
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  4. R. Siegwart
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  5. P. Beardsley
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. Mylaeus .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Maria Isabel Aldinhas Ferreira

  2. Institute for Systems and Robotics, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal

    João Silva Sequeira

  3. Endoenergy Systems Limited, Cambridge, UK

    Gurvinder Singh Virk

  4. School of Engineering, London South Bank University, London, UK

    Mohammad Osman Tokhi

  5. Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK

    Endre E. Kadar

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Mylaeus, A., Vempati, A., Tranter, B., Siegwart, R., Beardsley, P. (2019). A Survey on the Pain Threshold and Its Use in Robotics Safety Standards. In: Aldinhas Ferreira, M., Silva Sequeira, J., Singh Virk, G., Tokhi, M., E. Kadar, E. (eds) Robotics and Well-Being. Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering, vol 95. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12524-0_13

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