In 2019 Hocoma Development was elected for an Award from the EU-Horizon2020-funded COVR project, to work on Safe Force Interaction for Rehabilitation Robotics (SAFIRE).

On the 24th of August 2020, we participated at the COVR Open Day, with the title “Safe Interaction between Patient and Robot”. Because of circumstances, the workshop was held as an online event. Different Award projects were presented and discussed, next to keynote lectures on product safety and certification.

As Hocoma we presented our work on analyzing and implementing safety for high-performance control of interaction forces between robot and patient during neurorehabilitation, on which we had worked during the last year together with COVR member Roessingh Research and Development, the Netherlands.

The day brought interesting and relevant discussion on topics such as standardization and safety testing, with special attention to the new safety standard (IEC 80601-2-78) covering the safety of Rehabilitation Robots in particular. We discussed on how to use this standard to reconsider and improve safety and compliance of our current and future robots and to conceive new features to maintain safety in high performance force control. We also learned from the presentations of other academic and industrial R&D groups and the discussions around their work, proposing for example novel testing methods.

We thank the COVR partners for the organizing this interesting workshop, as well as for the collaboration, their financial and expert support and guidance to our work, which will contribute to maintaining the high level of safety of all our products, now and in the future.