Eduard Fosch-Villaronga and Hadassah Drukarch win European Commission’s Product Safety Award
The EU Product Safety Award encourages and honors innovative business initiatives and research that make a difference for consumers. This year, the Gold Medal was awarded to Eduard and Hadassah for their innovative research on diversity in robot design, testbed, and safety standardization
Although science underscores the importance of integrating diversity into healthcare, there is limited research on how this applies to concrete innovations like robotics.
The research study conducted by Eduard Fosch-Villaronga and Hadassah Drukarch focuses on the safety standard for personal care robots ISO 13482:2014, particularly lower-limb rehabilitation exoskeletons. It underlines significant deficiencies in incorporating gender, age, and health considerations in robotics development. Consequently, and despite developers adhering to existing standards, these products can still cause physical and mental harm to users. For example, although current exoskeletons are adaptable to different body sizes and shapes, they do not fit female bodies (with wider hips and breast measurements), which may cause physical or mental safety concerns.
The evidence presented in their article outlines safety risks to users’ safety caused by overlooking diversity considerations during product development and testing. The research concludes with concrete recommendations for both standards makers and manufacturers to reflect better the broad diversity of users of personal care robots.
“The Commission is committed to promoting gender inclusiveness in standards, and this research is really a prime example of it,” the Jury noted.
This research gave birth to the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant Safe & Sound Towards evidence-based policymaking for healthcare robots of which Eduard Fosch-Villaronga is the principal investigator. Please read more about the research here.
Safe and Sound is a project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon-ERC program, Grant Agreement No. 101076929.