Design of a soft upper body robot for physical human-robot interaction

To physically interact with children, a robot should be safe and durable. We have developed a small toy sized robot with a soft skin that is robust to playful physical interaction. The upper body, including the arms, pelvis, chest and back has soft, 3D printed air-filled modules connected to pressure sensors to sense contact and provide protection to the child and robot while interacting. These soft skin modules cover the underlying actuators and the rigid 3D printed frame with printed bearings. In this paper, we present the design process of these modules and demonstrate their efficacy by implementing a "grab and move" user interface for posing the robot link by link.