Implementing safety functions for collaborative robotics

Development in technologies has led to huge strides being made in industrial robotics. It used to be inconceivable for the operator to penetrate into the workspace of the robot during production. Henceforth, the standard on safety requirements for industrial robots allows collaborative robotics cells to be designed in which operator and robot share their workspaces to perform tasks in collaboration with each other. This progress poses new occupational safety and health problems. Robot manufacturers propose technical solutions in the form of safety modules or cards so as to implement collaborative robotics cells that comply with the recommendations of the standard. But currently there are very few guides and little assistance available for integrators and for users. They therefore find themselves ill-equipped to design and produce collaborative robotics cells that are safe.

Two objectives are pursued by our study. Firstly, more in-depth knowledge of the new technical solutions proposed by manufacturers for collaborative robotics will enable us to answer future requests for assistance on the subject, the number of such requests being likely to increase over the coming years. Secondly, we want to help integrators and users of collaborative robots to implement robotics cells by using the safety functions proposed by the manufacturers with a view to reducing the source of mechanical risks. Our study will be based on the various steps of designing and producing an experimental collaborative robotics cell in the laboratory in order to emphasise the difficulties and the limitations with which the future integrators and users of the robots might be faced.

Planned dissemination:
Based on this study, a practical guide will be written for robot users and integrators, enabling them to overcome the difficulties of implementing a collaborative robotics cell safely. The results will also be published in a specialist journal for the field, and used for standardisation purposes.