Safety First: On the Safe Deployment of Robotic Systems

Abstract

Belzile, Bruno St-Onge, DavidThe deployment of robotic systems always brings several challenges. Among them, safety is of uttermost importance, as these robots share their environment with humans at a certain degree. In this chapter, you will get an overlook of some standards relevant to robotic systems, pertaining mostly to their scope and the organizations issuing them. These standards and others documents such as technical specifications are relevant to conduct the risk assessment of a new system and mitigation of the identified hazards, two critical steps in the deployment of robot cells, mobile manipulators, etc. While we will first focus on conventional industrial robots, we will then move to collaborative robots (cobots)Cobot, with which human operators’ safety is even more critical considering the intrinsic close proximity, as well as mobile robots. It is important to understand that the information presented in this chapter is only a brief introduction to the process leading to the safe deployment of a robotic system, whether it is a conventional industrial robot, a cobot or a mobile robot. You will need to refer to existing standards, technical specifications, guidelines and other documents that are yet to be released, as it is a field constantly adapting to new technologies. Moreover, a safe deployment goes beyond any written document, as a thorough analysis is critical, which includes elements that may not be considered by any standard.