Augusto Khoury

Papers

Total Citations

244

H-Index

About

Augusto Khoury is a leading researcher in human-robot interaction, with a primary focus on safety and injury prevention in collaborative robotics. His work addresses a critical challenge: enabling robots to understand and avoid causing physical harm to humans during close-proximity operations. Khoury’s most influential contribution is his pioneering framework for embedding medical injury knowledge directly into robot control systems, first introduced in his highly cited 2012 paper “On making robots understand safety” (191 citations). This work, along with its companion study “A truly safely moving robot has to know what injury it may cause” (47 citations), established a new paradigm for safety—moving beyond simple collision avoidance to biomechanically informed speed and force regulation. By analyzing the relationship between collision mass, velocity, geometry, and resulting injury severity, Khoury developed control strategies that proactively limit robot motion to prevent harm. His 2014 German-language paper further refined these principles for practical implementation. With a cumulative impact of over 240 citations, Khoury’s research has fundamentally shaped how roboticists approach safety in physical human-robot interaction, laying the groundwork for safer industrial and service robots that can work alongside people without compromising human well-being.