Energy-Based Injury Protection Database: Including Shearing Contact Thresholds for Hand and Finger Using Porcine Surrogates

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive energy-based injury protection database for robotic collisions, including shearing contact scenarios, to improve safety thresholds and control strategies in human-robot interactions.

Contribution

It introduces the first energy-based injury database incorporating shearing contact thresholds, expanding safety data beyond perpendicular impacts for more realistic collision scenarios.

Findings

Shearing contacts cause fewer injuries than perpendicular impacts.

Collision angle significantly influences injury severity.

The database enables energy-limiting safety controllers for diverse collisions.

Abstract

While robotics research continues to propose strategies for collision avoidance in human-robot interaction, the reality of constrained environments and future humanoid systems makes contact inevitable. To mitigate injury risks, energy-constraining control approaches are commonly used, often relying on safety thresholds derived from blunt impact data in EN ISO 10218-2:2025. However, this dataset does not extend to edged or pointed collisions. Without scalable, clinically grounded datasets covering diverse contact scenarios, safety validation remains limited. Previous studies have laid the groundwork by assessing surrogate-based velocity and mass limits across various geometries, focusing on perpendicular impacts. This study expands those datasets by including shearing contact scenarios in unconstrained collisions, revealing that collision angle significantly affects injury outcomes. Notably, unconstrained shearing contacts result in fewer injuries than perpendicular ones. By reevaluating all prior porcine surrogate data, we establish energy thresholds across geometries and contact types, forming the first energy-based Injury Protection Database. This enables the development of meaningful energy-limiting controllers that ensure safety across a wide range of realistic collision events.