Soft is Safe: Human-Robot Interaction for Soft Robots
Rajashekhar V S, Gowdham Prabhakar
TL;DR
This paper surveys the intersection of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and soft robotics, framing safety and intuitive user engagement as central challenges and opportunities. It systematically reviews control methods, design variants, materials, and manufacturing techniques that enable safe physical interactions, alongside a rich taxonomy of input and output modalities used in soft robots. The study identifies key applications in manipulation and healthcare, and candidly discusses limitations such as stability, safety under pneumatic actuation, and material wear, while outlining research opportunities in modeling, multimodal sensing, and advanced fabrication. The authors conclude that HRI for soft robots is nascent but holds substantial promise for safer, more adaptable human-robot collaboration in Industry 5.0 and clinical settings.
Abstract
With the presence of robots increasing in the society, the need for interacting with robots is becoming necessary. The field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) has emerged important since more repetitive and tiresome jobs are being done by robots. In the recent times, the field of soft robotics has seen a boom in the field of research and commercialization. The Industry 5.0 focuses on human robot collaboration which also spurs the field of soft robotics. However the HRI for soft robotics is still in the nascent stage. In this work we review and then discuss how HRI is done for soft robots. We first discuss the control, design, materials and manufacturing of soft robots. This will provide an understanding of what is being interacted with. Then we discuss about the various input and output modalities that are used in HRI. The applications where the HRI for soft robots are found in the literature are discussed in detail. Then the limitations of HRI for soft robots and various research opportunities that exist in this field are discussed in detail. It is concluded that there is a huge scope for development for HRI for soft robots.