As robots are continually being improved to be smaller, lighter, smarter and more complex their use in an environment that is shared with people has become increasingly more important. Naturally, a critical factor before a robot is allowed to share a workspace with a human is safety. A lot of research is being done to allow robots to behave safely and prevent injuries to humans within its workspace, much of which summarized in Haddadin and Croft, 2016. Concepts like passivity are frequently used to ensure the robots remain stable under all conditions and disturbances (G. Raiola et al. 2018).
The motion's safety can be guaranteed by limiting the energy with which the robot moves and the power that could be transferred in the case of a collision. However, so far most of the research concerning safe behavior has used a fixed-base manipulator for its implementation. While manipulators are useful both in their own right and to prove the concept behind a safety method, it is also essential that safety methods are adapted or designed to suit more complex robots.
So far, published research into making a safety aware whole-body controller for a robotic mobile servant has been relatively scarce.