Enabling robots for direct physical interaction and cooperation with humans has been one of robotics research primary goals over decades. I will outline how our work on human-centered robot design, control, and planning may let robots for humans become a commodity in our near-future society. For this, we developed new generations of impedance controlled lightweight robots, which are sought to safely act as human assistants and collaborators over a variety of application domains. These may e.g. involve industrial assembly and manufacturing, medical assistance, or house-hold helpers in everyone’s home. The latest generation of lightweight robots was recently commercialized as the KUKA LBR iiwa, which is considered to be the first commercial representative of this new class of robots. However, there is so much more to be tackled than mechatronics design alone. Clearly, a robot has to be equipped with the skills to perceive its surrounding and deduct according actions forsuccessfully carrying out its given task. At the same time the primary objective of a robot’s actionaround humans is to ensure that even in case of malfunction or user errors no human shall be harmed because of the robot’s action or inaction. For this, instantaneous, safe, and intelligent context based reaction paired with according subsequent actions to unforeseen events in partially unknown environments become crucial. I will outline how far we have come with the aforementioned research problems till today, which major hurdles are still ahead, and what can be expected from near-to-midterm future research.