IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2018 - 39

In Pursuit of Safety
An Open-Source Library for Physical
Human-Robot Interaction

©istockphoto.com/gmast3r

By Benjamin Navarro, Aïcha Fonte, Philippe Fraisse,
Gérard Poisson, and Andrea Cherubini

O

penPHRI is a C++/Python general-purpose
software scheme with several built-in safety
measures designed to ease robot programming for physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) and collaboration. Aside from
providing common functionalities, the library can be
easily customized and enhanced thanks to the project's
open-source nature. The OpenPHRI framework consists
of a two-layer damping controller, depicted in Figure 1.
This allows the user to provide compliance and other
safety features at both the joint and task levels, depending
on the application.
pHRI
A situation in which direct contact occurs between a person
and a robot is referred to as pHRI. From the human perspective, such interplay can be either intentional or undesired.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2018.2810098
Date of publication: 17 May 2018

Undesired contact may occur if a person enters the robot
workspace without activating a presence-detection system
(e.g., a light barrier, floor mat, or laser scanner). Such contact
may, of course, lead to severe injuries. Voluntary physical
interactions, by contrast, are needed whenever a person connects with a robot to stop, guide, or teach it a behavior.
This type of interaction is needed in factories so that
robots and workers may operate closely or jointly. Other scenarios include physiotherapy health-care centers and domestic assistance cases for elderly or disabled people. In all these
situations, measures must be taken to ensure the safety of the
people in a robot's vicinity.
Such measures can be implemented at the hardware level,
using passively compliant actuators, or at the control/software
level. While mechanically compliant devices allow fast impact
force absorption, they are available on only a restricted set of
robots and add a nonnegligible cost to the platform. However,
control-level solutions can be applied to virtually any robot.
Moreover, they can provide preventive actions (e.g., collision
avoidance and deceleration) that reduce the risk of undesired

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JUNE 2018

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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

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IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2018

Contents
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2018 - Cover1
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