Keiko Homma of Service Robotics Research Team, Robot Innovation Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)

Assistive robots have the following safety issues. - Many of the potential users of the robots, including elderly and handicapped people, are not trained to operate the robots. - There are people who do not operate the assistive robots by themselves but accept the effects and risks from the robots. - Safety of the assistive robots cannot be established by isolating the robots from the users. - An emergency stop may not ensure safety. For example, when a robotic walking assistant device suddenly stops by using the emergency stop, the user may fall down. Therefore, assistive robots must be designed with safety in mind. I will introduce studies related to safety of the assistive robots including development of a risk assessment assistance tool for the manufacturers of the assistive robots, development of test dummies for durability test of exoskeleton-typed physical assistant robots.

Biography:

Keiko Homma received B.Sc and Ph.D degrees in Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1989 and in 2004, respectively. In 1989 she joined the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, which was reorganized into the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in 2001. She is currently a senior researcher at Service Robotics Research Team, Robot Innovation Research Center, AIST. From 1995 to 1996 she was a visiting researcher at Helsinki University of Technology (current Aalto University). Dr. Homma is a member of IEEE, and her current research interest centers on assistive and therapeutic robot systems, including their safety aspects.