Safe-By-Design Digital Twins for Human-Robot Interaction: A Use Case for Humanoid Service Robots

Integrating humanoid service mobile robots into human environments presents numerous challenges, primarily concerning the safety of interactions between robots and humans. To address these safety concerns, we propose a novel approach that leverages the capabilities of digital twin technology by tailoring it to incorporate comprehensive and robust safety concepts. This paper introduces a "safe-by-design" digital twin that operates alongside the real twin robot in the loop, engaging real-time safety framework during physical interactions with the surrounding environment, including humans.To validate the effectiveness of our proposed safe-by-design digital twin framework, we conducted experiments using a humanoid service mobile robot alongside simulated human counterparts. Our results demonstrate the capability of the integrated impact safety module within the proposed digital twin approach to limit the velocities of both the robot’s base and arms, adhering to injury biomechanics-based safety thresholds. These findings emphasize the promise of our proposed approach for ensuring the physical safety of humanoid service mobile robots operating in dynamic human environments. It enables the digital twin to preemptively identify potential safety hazards and formulate safe intervention actions to ensure the robot’s compliance with safety regulations, paving the way for safer and more widespread adoption of robotic systems in various service domains.