Better than a sharp stick in the eye -- Japanese robot

[Taro Toporific]

poke-eyeball-robot.jpg

Robots and humans interact
---Basic Experiments on Collision of Sharp Mechanical Hazards against Eye for Estimation of Injury Severity---
Part 1 : Avoiding a poke in the eye
...experiment – conducted at the Academy for Safety Intelligence, Nagoya University, Japan.
The participant wearing protective glasses and the robot were separated by a working table. To minimize harming the participant, the original end- effectors for picking up and placing mechanical parts were replaced with square pyramid-shaped flexible polyurethane foam...
… a situation is created in which the sharp end effector tip of a robot suddenly approaches the eyes of a facing participant. But would the experimental participant move out of the way in time? That might depend, to a large extent, on their Reaction Time (RT)...
...Needless to say, the experiment could not be allowed to go so far as to actually poke a student in the eye, even with a foam-encased gripper – so the research team set about another study (following-up the RO-MAN paper) in which a robot’s metallic end-effector was fully exposed. And this time the robot jabbed it directly at an unprotected eyeball, causing considerable damage. The eyeball did not belong to a student, but rather, a recently-deceased pig.
More...

dummy-eye_536x315.jpg