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Robot With Knives Used In Robotics Injury Study
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports that German researchers, seeking to find out what would happen if a robot handling a sharp tool accidentally struck a human, set out to perform a series of cutting, stabbing, and puncturing tests. They used a robotic manipulator arm, fitted with various sharp tools (kitchen knife, scalpel, screwdriver) and performed striking tests at a block of silicone, a pig leg, and at one point, even the arm of a human volunteer. Volunteer, really?! The story includes video of the tests."
Robots don't need to be armed with weapons to be dangerous. I worked at a printing press which featured a huge bundling robot with a big grabber that would move at high speed. We had to get close to the thing while it was running to make sure it was operating correctly, and it was designed such that it could collide with itself or its puny human overlords if the motion algorithm was fauly or the readings from the positional servos were miscalibrated.
In short, imagine the robot arm in TFA swinging too far to the side, cutting a passerby, because it "thinks" that it's more centered than it really is. Collision detection would be likely disabled if the robot's job was to cut stuff!
> find out what would happen if a robot handling a sharp tool accidentally struck a human, set out to perform a series of cutting, stabbing, and puncturing tests
Um, why would anybody need to test this?
A robot handling a knife, making a cutting, stabbing or puncturing motion, with a human in the path of the knife, will necessarily be cut, stabbed and/or punctured. What happens to the human is directly related to the sharpness of the knife, the angle between the knife and the human, the shape of the knife and the force applied to the knife and/or human. What precisely is applying the force to the knife [ie, robot vs human] doesn't make a real difference, other than perhaps the robot may be capable of generating more force on the knife.
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When I was a kid I performed knife-based experiments on my fingers. Yeah, I got cut, but I determined that striking human flesh with a serrated knife does slightly less damage than sawing back and forth with the same knife. You're not a real nerd if you're not willing to make bodily sacrifices for the sake of science from time to time.
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Potentially more force, more speed (which both translates to force through inertia and less time to react and stop things) but IMO most crucially different control systems.
Afaict most control systems are designed both electrically (though PID etc) and mechanically (through worm drives etc) to control position as tightly as possible regardless of external applied force. That is what makes "machining" possible. It is what makes it possible for a machine to put components on PCBs at breakneck speed.
Humans don't work like that we control force. If we hit an unexpected resistance we have to consciously apply more force. We will also generally stop applying force if either we feel pain or the person we are working with feels pain and screams. On the flip-side if a resistance we are pressing against disappears we slip all over the place.
What this means is unless the tools are extremely sharp unpowered held tools only do serious damage under very particular situations e.g. when they slip out of a cut or when someone deliberately swings them with lots of force and misses. We have safety rules to deal with this.
Robots either need very different safety rules or they need systems developed to make them respond more like humans (the people in the article seem to be working on such a system).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Take a look at Saw Stop. A table saw that cuts wood and not a hot dog. http://www.sawstop.com/
I thought about that too, what could a robot with a knife accomplish with collision avoidance active? Answer is simple, limit the scope of when the detection is active. For example, lets say the robot is switching from a short blade to a long blade. It does this by dropping off one blade in a holder and grabbing another one. While this swap is taking place, there should be NO collisions. If a stupid meatbag walks up to it to try to figure out why "it just stopped", not knowing that it's pausing while loading new commands, and gets between it and the blade caddy, now he doesn't get impaled when the robot suddenly reactivates and goes to switch blades for the next task.
Collision detection of course would be off while it's actually doing the carving and expects there to be material at that location to carve.
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