Our safety shield uses set-based reachability analysis to verify if a contact between the human and the robot is possible before we could stop the robot. SARA shield comes in two modes: in the speed and separation monitoring (SSM), it guarantees that the robot is stopped before a collision could occur, and in the power and force limiting (PFL) mode, we guarantee pain-free contacts by limiting the kinetic energy of the robot before contact. Our safety shield is the first of its kind, providing provable safety for continuous action spaces in high-dimensional state-spaces and unpredictable dynamic environments. It can be applied to a variety of manipulation tasks and is highly effective in quickly reacting to highly dynamic human motion.
Publications:
- T-RO 2025: A General Safety Framework for Autonomous Manipulation in Human Environments [Arxiv]
- ICRA 2022: Provably Safe Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Manipulation in Human Environments [IEEExplore] [Arxiv]
- ICRA 2022: SaRA: A Tool for Safe Human-Robot Coexistence and Collaboration through Reachability Analysis [IEEExplore]