On a recent afternoon, Paul Evans stands beside a small blue and gray robotic arm. Inside the collaborative robotics laboratory on Southwest Research Institute’s sprawling West Side campus, the technology next to him offers a notable advancement in automated appendages: It can detect when it comes into contact with something — or someone — else and stop immediately.The arm is ‘force and torque limited,’ said Evans, director of SwRI’s manufacturing and robotics technologies department. ‘When it hits something, it faults out and stops,’ he said.