Safety Challenges of Transferable Robotic Systems

Abstract

Transferable robotic systems offer new possibilities to minimise investment risks and find new types of solutions for the changing production environment. Safety issues pose a significant challenge when developing transferable robotic solutions. Traditional safety solutions do not satisfactorily fulfil the needs of this kind of system. Recently, new types of safety solutions have been launched that open new possibilities to build safety solutions into transferable systems. These include new safety sensors, machine vision based safety systems, and safety controllers for robots that enable flexible fenceless safety systems and dynamic safety regions alongside a host of other attractive features. The new possibilities themselves create new and fairly complex challenges in safety design. This paper presents the safety challenges encountered when designing a transferable robotic system. It also studies various solutions and technologies proposed for meeting these challenges, and presents some examples and methods used to find a satisfactory solution.