Toward Safe Perception in human-robot interaction

Perception is a major component of a system when it comes to the concept of safety in human-robot interaction. Although designing a mechanically safe robot may reduce lots of potential hazards, it is still beneficiary or even required to have detailed knowledge of the current status of the robot, human, and other environmental entities. We refer to this knowledge as perceptional awareness, or simply perception, that subsumes: (i) what our system perceives from robot state and its environment, (ii) what our system perceives from human state, and (iii) what a human perceives from the robot state. In this paper we provide requirements for a holistic architecture to construct safe perception using multiple heterogeneous and independent sensors and processing units in any environment that includes both robots and humans. We also illustrate our concepts on the basis of particular instances of this scheme realized in the robotic lab.