Contact detection and physical interaction for low cost personal robots

We present a methodology for estimating joints torque due to external forces applied to a robot with large joints backlash and friction. This undesired non-linearity is common in personal robot, due to the use of low cost mechanical components and type of usage. Our method enables contact detection and human-robot physical interaction capabilities without using extra sensors. The effectiveness of our approach is shown with experiments on a Romeo robot arm from SoftBank Robotics.