Robotic Contact with the Human Body in Physical Human–Robot Interaction—Second Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Despite the progress made in the field of robotics in recent decades, the physical interaction between humans and robots is still a barely developed field, mainly because of safety requirements and the complexity of the task. A human is not a typical target for robot manipulation, but robots are already in contact with humans in existing applications such as rehabilitation, prosthetics, or feeding assistance. In these applications, contact is typically initiated or prepared by a human, and the remaining task is performed autonomously.

As robots become more intelligent, they are assigned tasks that involve more significant responsibility. There are many circumstances where a robot has to physically interact with a human in a fully autonomous way, including approach and contact operations, such as in rescue, nursing, elderly/child assistance, and many others.

This Special Issue focuses on the main challenges for a successful autonomous physical interaction with humans: pre-contact human detection and perception, development of sensorized human-friendly grippers and manipulators, and methods to estimate and identify the parameters of the human model during the performance.

Dr. Juan Manuel Gandarias
Dr. Francisco Pastor Martín
Dr. Marta Lorenzini
Dr. Jesús Manuel Gómez de Gabriel
Guest Editors

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• robot-to-human manipulationphysical human–robot collaboration (HRC)
• assistive and rehabilitation robotics
• haptic perception for pHRI
• physical devices for pHRI
• human-friendly grippers
• soft robotics for pHRI
• human modeling
• human kinodynamics estimation
• motion and trajectory planning in pHRI applications
• wearable robotics
• exoskeletons
• robotic prostheses
• biomedical sensors
• robotic learning for pHRI
• human-in-the-loop
• sensor fusion in pHRI applications
• computer vision for pHRI
• robotic-assisted ergonomics
• mobile manipulation for HRC
• floating-base robots for HRC

• Robotic Contact with the Human Body in Physical Human–Robot Interaction in Sensors (12 articles)