Human-Robot Physical Interaction

Dear Colleagues,

Industrial robotics is facing an epochal change, requiring to move from standard, fixed and pre-programmed solutions to advanced, re-configurable, flexible and intelligent systems. In fact, industrial environments are moving to dynamic production plants, requiring robots to deal with daily-changing processes and highly customizable goods. The role of industrial robots is dual: taking charge of heavy, repetitive and non-ergonomic tasks (autonomously or actively assisting the operator), and at the same time being able to learn new behaviors and applications. In such a way, it will be possible to efficiently assist operators while learning their behaviors, to be reproduced in an autonomous manner. This ambitious scenario, therefore, is strongly interdisciplinary, requiring expertise from different areas, such as control theory, machine learning, artificial intelligence, safety and regulation, mechanical and electrical design, etc. Different applications can be thought of: wearable robotics, collaborative robotics, mobile robotics, sensing and actuation solutions, etc. The aim of this special issue is to identify high quality papers dealing with such arising challenges and direction of industrial robotics, taking into account human-centered solutions capable to actively assist operators while learning their behaviors.
Contributions related (but not limited) to the following topics are welcome:

• human-robot physical interaction;
• collaborative controllers;
• intelligent control;
• task learning;
• safety-based control algorithms;
• collaborative robots and exoskeleton design and control;
• AI and ML applied to robot control and learning;
• AR/VR for industrial plants;
• human’s knowledge transfer to robotic platforms;
• intelligent motion planning;
• optimization of industrial robotic solutions;
• advanced safety;
• natural human-robot interaction;
• human’s intention recognition;
• mobile collaborative robotics.

Dr. Roveda Loris
Dr. Braghin Francesco
Dr. Sotiris Makris
Dr. Petar B. Petrovic
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Robotics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.