Physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) aims at taking advantage of the complementary capabilities of robots and humans. One of the key challenges in pHRI is to provide a high-bandwidth human-robot interaction that is safe and intuitive for the human user. To this end, it is proposed in this work to revisit the design of robots in order to provide a low-impedance mechanical interaction. The concept of macro-mini robotic system is used and applied to interactive robotic devices. Also, the design of backdrivable redundant parallel robots is considered. In this concept, parallel robots are used to provide backdrivability while kinematic redundancy is introduced to increase the rotational workspace of parallel mechanisms, by alleviating the singularities. Solutions based on passive or active human-robot interfaces are proposed and examples of implementations are described. Prototypes of robotics systems developed at Université Laval based on the above concepts are demonstrated.