Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKSIn sophisticated manufacturing environments, humans often must interact and negotiate space with machines on the shop floor. Special care and attention are required when interacting with robots, as they have a greater range of motion – for example, with their robotic arms or, in the case of autonomous mobile robots, considering their movement around the shop floor. In these contexts, worker safety is paramount and must always be assured.
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Human-Machine Safety Assurance
Challenge: Ensuring Human Safety
- The assurance of human safety, however, presents significant challenges. One is the sheer number of possible scenarios to consider. For example, humans may approach the machine from different angles, at different locations on the shop floor, and at different production times.
- Another obstacle is deciding how a robot should react once one of the considered scenarios is encountered. It must determine which of the several potential courses of action maximizes safety in the present context.
- Finally, the implementation of these responses should still encourage the manufacturing processes to operate as productively as possible.
Need: A Systematic Approach
- To provide the necessary level of health and safety assurance, a systematic approach must be adopted.
- This includes listing, analyzing, and classifying all relevant machine safety scenarios, developing effective human reaction strategies, and considering manufacturing constraints.
- Ideally, the safety approach is verified by independent contributors to ensure that no critical aspects have been overlooked.
Solution: Providing a Safety Assurance System
This systematic approach is packaged as a safety concept, including a domain-specific framework for carrying out the analysis and a customized safety solution to address the system’s needs. The analysis, development, and the final solution are thoroughly documented and validated.