  The use of pointed or edged tools or objects is one of the most challenging
aspects of today's application of physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). One
reason for this is that the severity of harm caused by such edged or pointed
impactors is less well studied than for blunt impactors. Consequently, the
standards specify well-reasoned force and pressure thresholds for blunt
impactors and advise avoiding any edges and corners in contacts. Nevertheless,
pointed or edged impactor geometries cannot be completely ruled out in real
pHRI applications. For example, to allow edged or pointed tools such as
screwdrivers near human operators, the knowledge of injury severity needs to be
extended so that robot integrators can perform well-reasoned, time-efficient
risk assessments. In this paper, we provide the initial datasets on injury
prevention for the human hand based on drop tests with surrogates for the human
hand, namely pig claws and chicken drumsticks. We then demonstrate the ease and
efficiency of robot use using the dataset for contact on two examples. Finally,
our experiments provide a set of injuries that may also be expected for human
subjects under certain robot mass-velocity constellations in collisions. To
extend this work, testing on human samples and a collaborative effort from
research institutes worldwide is needed to create a comprehensive human injury
avoidance database for any pHRI scenario and thus for safe pHRI applications
including edged and pointed geometries.
