Programme
IROS 2019 - Macau, China
Assuring Safety for Physically Assistive Robots Workshop- Programme -
Workshop Structure
Before physically assistive robots can be deployed in real-world environments, the developers and manufacturers have to ensure that the design and operation, particularly with a vulnerable end-user in the loop, is going to be safe and reliable. Additionally clinicians, carers and therapists will be unwilling to adopt these technologies until they have confidence in the assistive robots ability to conform to the established healthcare guidance and regulations, and ensure patient safety and wellbeing.
The development of physically assistive robotics bring together experts in biomechanics, physical and social human-robot interaction, safety procedures, adaptive and compliant control, personalization, user modelling and multimodal design for specific cognitive or physical disabilities. This workshop will be of interest to researchers working in the area of assistive robots, as well as representatives from robotics companies, people involved in standards development and assistive technology regulation. We expect that this workshop will also be of interest to other attendees wanting to get an overview of the state-of-the-art in this area and the pending research challenges for ensuring safety in this rapidly growing field.
The workshop has been carefully designed to encourage collaborative discussion and co-learning through a mixture of creative small group activities interspersed with presentations and poster sessions. In addition to the 4 invited talks there will be 3 group based activity sessions, as well as poster sessions and 8 contributed talks.
The aim is to give participants the opportunity to deep-dive into methodology for safety assurance of autonomous systems and existing standards and discuss and debate their utility and content.
The focus is on setting up an international working group to work on improving the existing standards where safety and the needs of a vulnerable user are not currently the focal points.
The small group activities will be:
1. Brainstorming safety related issues for specific physically assistive robot based on use cases and personas
2. Review of existing relevant standards and the AAIP Body of Knowledge for RAS
3. Empathy tools to identify user accessibility needs in relation to safety for physically assistive robots
4. Analysing the impact of deictic speech, distraction and cognitive load in a physically assistive task – using Human-Human Interaction Role Play for a jacket dressing task
Schedule
This workshop has been designed to facilitate engagement and discussion between roboticists with a wide range of specialisms including safety and control experts, manufacturers of assistive robots, as well as those developing the standards and regulations, and even those with a healthcare background.
