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Safety certification requirements for domestic robots
... For years, industrial robot safety has been considered as a problem, in use, and has resulted in laws and regulations which keep users away from robots. Well-defined operations, such as programming, repair and teaching, are difficult (Mitka et al. 2012). The American National Institute of Standards and Technology classifies three levels of safety zones for robots (Mitka et al. 2012) as shown in Figure 11. Figure ...
... Well-defined operations, such as programming, repair and teaching, are difficult (Mitka et al. 2012). The American National Institute of Standards and Technology classifies three levels of safety zones for robots (Mitka et al. 2012) as shown in Figure 11. Figure ...
... 12 demonstrates the risk assessments and reductions for robots on construction sites(Mitka et al. 2012) Three levels of safety zones for robots(Mitka et al. 2012). ...
Employing robots on building sites may have been considered an unattainable fantasy in the past or simply a futuristic dream. Many construction practitioners are fiercely opposed to the use of robots and are wary of losing their jobs when such creations are intelligent enough to replace human resources. In contrast, the prohibitively high costs of manufacturing, producing and using robots on-site, in comparison to the costs of hiring labourers, is a major concern thwarting the ideas of many construction practitioners who wish to try something new and innovatory. Hence, hiring a robot to work on-site is not an imminent threat to the workers. Nevertheless, the recent technological breakthrough has caused waves in the industry and excited interest. It is reasonable to foresee that robots will usher in a new era in the construction industry. In this chapter, we adopt the data and method triangulation approach to study the construction practitioners’, academics’ and tool providers’ viewpoints with regard to the costs and benefits of robots on construction safety and the construction industry. The interview results show that academics and construction practitioners in different parts of the world worry that robots may take jobs away from manual labourers. Wearable robotics have recently been introduced to one of the companies in Hong Kong’s construction industry, yet most workers and even safety officers have no knowledge of this advance. A focus group interview has been conducted with a PowerPoint presentation and some research participants have worn the wearable robotics and commented on the tools’ usefulness and efficacy.
... For years, industrial robot safety has been considered as a problem, in use, and has resulted in laws and regulations which keep users away from robots. Well-defined operations, such as programming, repair and teaching, are difficult (Mitka et al. 2012). The American National Institute of Standards and Technology classifies three levels of safety zones for robots (Mitka et al. 2012) as shown in Figure 11. Figure 12 demonstrates the risk assessments and reductions for robots on construction sites (Mitka et al. 2012) Figure 11: Three levels of safety zones for robots (Mitka et al. 2012). ...
... Well-defined operations, such as programming, repair and teaching, are difficult (Mitka et al. 2012). The American National Institute of Standards and Technology classifies three levels of safety zones for robots (Mitka et al. 2012) as shown in Figure 11. Figure 12 demonstrates the risk assessments and reductions for robots on construction sites (Mitka et al. 2012) Figure 11: Three levels of safety zones for robots (Mitka et al. 2012). ...
... Well-defined operations, such as programming, repair and teaching, are difficult (Mitka et al. 2012). The American National Institute of Standards and Technology classifies three levels of safety zones for robots (Mitka et al. 2012) as shown in Figure 11. Figure 12 demonstrates the risk assessments and reductions for robots on construction sites (Mitka et al. 2012) Figure 11: Three levels of safety zones for robots (Mitka et al. 2012). ...
Many construction practitioners may have felt the pinch of information technology in recent decades. Building Information Modelling is one of the most useful pieces of software for people in this profession, as it helps them to foresee a building structure before it is constructed. During construction, BIM can let us see clearly the procedure and process of different parts of creating a structure in different times; hence, it saves the costs of making a building model in physical form. On the other hand, it helps retrofit companies to foresee the facility to be placed in a room before we put all the furniture inside. That essentially enhances the communication between different stakeholders. Besides this, usage of BIM improves safety. The results of our case study suggest that the software fit like a glove with additive manufacturing. This paper casts light on the fact that more information technology and construction practitioners may recognise the importance of BIM in safety at the end of the day. In view of all the above-mentioned advantages brought by BIM, it is high time for construction practitioners to pin their ears back to fully utilise it for safety and cost saving.
... Recommendation for software quality 1. Robot motion simulator in 2-D or 3-D shall be provided to simulate robot actions under significantly diverse situations. Since divergences between the actual and the virtual sphere might be possible, simulation data sheet shall be measured on the real ones [7]. 1. ...
... A restart schedule shall be ready to execute after an emergency stop. In case of an inadequate restart, program and data could be saved on disk erroneously which might influence the capability of the robot to achieve specific safety goals, as well as user's ability to control it [7]. 3. Restarting the device by pressing just a button shall not be achievable. ...
... A more complicated restart schedule shall be available to prevent any harmful movements or similar conditions. The ultimate goal of this requirement is that an easy restart method shall not be effective to deal with any arbitrary situation and, thus, a resident might unintentionally push the restart button with an ineffective or disoriented robot's start-up most likely to lead to a mishap [7]. 4. The installation of stop and restart buttons shall be frequently checked for its safe performance. ...
Τhe most critical challenge of this paper is to briefly present the issue of human safety that has been drafted based on the specific task scenarios of a fetch and carry personal robot. Detailed requirements are discussed for standardization that does not exist yet for this sector of robotics. In this text, the authors address the need and concern for comprehensive precautions taken for these ubiquitous helpers since technological development have proven that they are viable commercial products and not just research prototypes and platforms only for laboratories. Generally speaking, it is clear that it doesn’t exist, so far, a safety strategy for designing these systems with a required level of safety at the beginning of the product lifecycle. Furthermore, the authors have kept a structure similar to a standard hoping that this paper should serve as a base to practically assess the safety standardization activities of these extraordinary devices.
... Προειδοποιητικές πινακίδες να τοποθετηθούν ώστε να προστατευτούν οι ένοικοι που συμπεριφέρονται απρόσεκτα στο ρομπότ που εκτελεί την εργασία του, αν το ρομπότ ενσωματώνει επικίνδυνα εργαλεία όπως λεπίδες [7]. ...
... Τα παιδιά να μην το κακομεταχειρίζονται ή να του επιτίθενται. Ο χρήστης να δώσει περισσότερη προσοχή στα νήπια επειδή είναι εξαιρετικά απρόσεκτα και ευάλωτα [7]. ...
... Ο χρήστης να τοποθετήσει σε εμφανές σημείο εντός του σπιτιού το φυλλάδιο οδηγιών του ρομπότ [7]. ...
Humanoids, in this paper, are considered as socio-technical systems and not just technological artifacts since they are operating, usually, in the domestic environment and human-robot interactions constitute basic functions of any of these robotic systems. Since specific safety standards for this robotic sector are not available, they should be carried out on the base of system safety engineering that is discussed here and especially on STAMP (Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes). STAMP involves the relation between manufacturer, user and organization for standardization that results from safety standards with the respective safety requirements, interface from industrial safety to humanoid safety, effect of the use of accident analysis on safety standards. In this paper, we follow the steps of STAMP methodology in order to establish safety standardization’s requirements for humanoids. These results may serve as a supplement to the standards.
... On the contrary, the guideline of "stopping or separating" with fixed and movable guards and interlocks operators from robots that is applied in industrial environment is improper for home used robots since toy robots, compared to their industrial relatives, are smaller, weaker and more autonomous. In addition, every manufacturer ought to follow inherent safety design practices [14] and safety measures according to ISO 13857 [13] as well as the "Safety certification requirements for domestic robots", published by the authors [12] shall be useful to toy robots. ...
... Safety features of AIBO such as (lock indicator, unlock hole, insertion slot, release lever), mode indicator, AC adaption conversion pack, safety switch of ''memory stick'', pin for removing AIBO's extremities, over- current monitoring protection and tilt sensors shall be functioning properly [12]. Safety sensors, in case of AIBO, such as thermometric, infrared distance, vibration, acceleration sensor, pressure sensor with switches on the chin, back and paws shall be tested under dynamic conditions. ...
... When the receiver receives a signal from the remote RF transmitter, the relay Designer shall examine if AIBO is operating appropriately in accordance with its technical specifications. Functions that shall be inspected are the Wi- Fi, the operating light, the volume control switch, the game mode, the clinic mode, the house sitting mode and the energy station [12]. The user of AIBO shall be advised that he/she shall frequently inspect and maintain the AC adapter to avoid fire hazards, the receiving antenna for interference, the shield of interface cable for damaging, the lithium-ion battery for leaking, the enclosure for opening and the external flexible cord for damaging [12]. ...
Taking into consideration the fast growing market for toy robots to users the most critical challenge that arises is what are the design requirements that could be applied by the manufacturer of these robots via safety standards? Standardization endeavours to ensure human-robot interaction based on hazard identification and accident analysis. It attempts to protect homeowners by codifying more comprehensible measures. There is no complete or incomplete safety checklist, only a list that residents and manufacturers consent that is appropriate to be handled. Nevertheless, the corrective and preventive measures could vary in the design level of this emerging technology. All the safety constraints should be applied in the physical system design of the toy robot. This paper in hand proposes a systems approach of the design level with aim to present a novel method of accident analysis. These safety criteria provide a supplementary ground upon which a standard of a toy robot could be explicitly carried out, since particular standard's regulations do not exist yet.
... On the contrary, the guideline of " stopping or separating " with fixed and movable guards and interlocks operators from robots that is applied in industrial environment is improper for home used robots since toy robots, compared to their industrial relatives, are smaller, weaker and more autonomous. In addition, every manufacturer ought to follow inherent safety design practices [14] and safety measures according to ISO 13857 [13] as well as the " Safety certification requirements for domestic robots " , published by the authors [12] shall be useful to toy robots. Since specific safety standards for toy robots are not available the authors propose that their safety-guided design shall be carried out on guidelines that developed in areas of safety of toys. ...
... Wiring, communication devices, sensors, wiring connections means shall meet the relevant essential safety principles concerning electrical properties. Safety features of AIBO such as (lock indicator, unlock hole, insertion slot, release lever), mode indicator, AC adaption conversion pack, safety switch of ''memory stick'', pin for removing AIBO's extremities, overcurrent monitoring protection and tilt sensors shall be functioning properly [12]. Safety sensors, in case of AIBO, such as thermometric, infrared distance, vibration, acceleration sensor, pressure sensor with switches on the chin, back and paws shall be tested under dynamic conditions. ...
... When the receiver receives a signal from the remote RF transmitter, the relay Designer shall examine if AIBO is operating appropriately in accordance with its technical specifications. Functions that shall be inspected are the Wi- Fi, the operating light, the volume control switch, the game mode, the clinic mode, the house sitting mode and the energy station [12]. The user of AIBO shall be advised that he/she shall frequently inspect and maintain the AC adapter to avoid fire hazards, the receiving antenna for interference, the shield of interface cable for damaging, the lithium-ion battery for leaking, the enclosure for opening and the external flexible cord for damaging [12]. ...
Taking into consideration the fast growing market for toy robots to users the most critical challenge that arises is what are the design requirements that could be applied by the manufacturer of these robots via safety standards? Standardization endeavours to ensure human-robot interaction based on hazard identification and accident analysis. It attempts to protect homeowners by codifying more comprehensible measures. There is no complete or incomplete safety checklist, only a list that residents and manufacturers consent that is appropriate to be handled. Nevertheless, the corrective and preventive measures could vary in the design level of this emerging technology. All the safety constraints should be applied in the physical system design of the toy robot. This paper in hand proposes a systems approach of the design level with aim to present a novel method of accident analysis. These safety criteria provide a supplementary ground upon which a standard of a toy robot could be explicitly carried out, since particular standard's regulations do not exist yet.
... The social interaction between humans and robotic systems is a well-developed cooperation, in accordance with specific 1 School of Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi, Greece rules and human standards of behavior and communication [40]. This has been partly achieved by putting considerable effort to ensure safety in the human-robot interaction [98,143]. However, safety is not the only requirement for a harmonious coexistence between people and robots. ...
... Safety is a crucial factor influencing human behavior while interacting with a social robotic system [98,143]. The concept of personal safety is particularly important for the acceptance and integration of technology into people's lives and is defined as users' sense of easily sharing their personal space with the robot [12]. ...
Rapid technological and scientific developments in the robotics field have led to the expansion of the use of service robots in domestic environments. The purpose of the study reported in this paper is to identify the factors that determine people’s psychology, attitude, and intention to use a social robotic system. A new conceptual framework is developed and empirically tested, using data from 347 people, performing Structural Equation Modeling analysis. The proposed framework incorporates various factors related to hedonic attitudes, utilitarian attitudes, normative beliefs, control beliefs, and personality traits. The results reveal predominantly the positive impact of normative beliefs and utilitarian and hedonic attitudes but, also, the negative impact of control beliefs on people’s intention to use social robot systems. Consequently, it is concluded that future clients are not only influenced by society’s general attitudes, perceptions, and prejudices towards technology but, also, by the functional benefits of social robots.
... For robotic systems in particular, some research has been conducted to analyse potential hazards and how to address them appropriately, e.g.: [17,84,85,86]. Hazard analysis within robotics usually refers to or is inspired by ISO 13482 [17], which is a standard for personal care robots. ...
... This means that safety should be addressed for the entire operation of the robot, emphasising the need for compliance and certification. Mikta et al. [86] introduced an initial idea using national standards. Some of these concepts have been introduced in newer standards for robots, such as ISO 13482 [17]. ...
There is an increasing interest in the development of autonomous mobile robots capable of solving tasks outside the classical industrial environment. A key component for autonomous behaviour is the use of perception systems to perceive a dynamically changing environment.
Critically, a commercial robot has to remain safe in adverse and/or malfunctioning situations that may occur in its working environment. When safety is addressed in the context of perception, it however often requires the introduction of ever more complex algorithms, which carries an intrinsic risk of inexplicable failures. This especially is an issue for autonomous operation, since algorithms such as neural networks increasingly are used for surveying and identifying obstacles. Therefore, safety should be addressed using processes that can ensure the functionality and safety of the product. A common example of such processes are functional safety standards, which impose requirements on specific procedures and methods to improve reliability and safety of the product. Functional safety is however difficult to achieve and apply, even more so given the lack of systematic approaches to achieve standards-compliant safety for mobile robots.
In this thesis, we focus on field robots which is a specific subfield within mobile robotics. Field robots are robots for outdoor tasks in domains such as construction, forestry and
agriculture. We investigate field robots in the context of agriculture, motivated by the increased need for efficiency and safety, stemming from the decreasing work force. Even
in highly developed countries, agricultural operations contain many risks to people and
animals.
The research in this thesis is rooted in interview and literature studies. This is to gather
information from both industry and academia on how safety is achieved. Functional safety has a high focus within industry; to study this we conducted interviews with practitioners of functional safety and developed a case study of certification for a commercial camera based sub-system for automatically clearing of weeds. In contrast, in academia we rely on a comprehensive literature study to map and understand how standards and safety within different robotics domains are used.
To facilitate the certification of autonomous robots and address the challenges of safe
perception systems, this thesis presents a rule-based language for enforcing the safety of
sensors with an explicit focus on cameras and computer vision. The language is referred
to as the Vision Safety Language (ViSaL). This language is high-level and allows the developer to enforce safety constraints during implementation. ViSaL enables this through the specification of rules to ascertain quality and safety throughout a vision pipeline. As an example, rules can consist of simple vision algorithms individually or in combination, to obtain a quality measure for the specific point in the perception pipeline. This approach, is experimentally evaluated in connection with the YOLO artificial neural network, to understand the costs and benefits of using ViSaL. We see that the overall performance of the system is increased while improving the reliability in the system. A key motivation of using ViSaL lies in facilitating certification, where reviews of documentation and code should be done. Reviews entail that certifiers read and understand the intent of the code. A clear communication between developers and certifiers is needed. We therefore conduct an investigation of program code readability using ViSaL, resulting in improvements to the language.
... In order to meet the safety requirements [4], Care-O-Bot is equipped with three laser scanners and several emergency stops. Furthermore, with its set of sensors and mobility the Care-O-Bot can collect large amounts of information which must be protected [6]. ...
... Back in the days, robots were mostly used in industrial environments where the approach was to build security measures around them to separate robots from humans. Engineers were mainly focusing on the engineering side of the problem and security was always seen as something that could be added later in the process [4]. For industrial manufacturing robots this might be an acceptable solution, but clearly this will not work in the case of MSRs which are cyber-physical systems (CPS) build to interact and help humans with their daily tasks. ...
Future homes will contain Mobile Service Robots (MSR) with diverse functionality. MSRs act in close proximity to humans and have the physical capabilities to cause serious harm to their environment. Furthermore, they have sensors that gather large amounts of data, which might contain sensitive information. A mobile service robot’s physical capabilities are controlled by networked computers susceptible to faults and intrusions. The proximity to humans and the possibility to physically interact with them makes it critical to think about the security issues of MSRs. In this work, we investigate possible attacks on mobile service robots. We survey adversary motivations to attack MSRs, analyse threat vectors and list different available defence mechanisms against attacks on MSRs.
... The installation of stop and restart buttons shall be frequently checked for its safe performance. An alarm realized by means of a stop button an/ or an audible alert and/or a visual cue and/or an auditory cue and/or an occasional verbal exclamation, shall be installed (Mitka et al., 2012). ...
... 2. The user shall prevent the robot operating in extreme heat or pressure to avoid loss of magnet's polarity. User shall be informed that the device shall operate a dry, well-ventilated space where the temperature is moderate (Mitka et al., 2012). 3. The material of magnets shall not contain vapors given off by oil based paint, paint thinner, moth proofing substances, flammable dust, or other explosive or toxic vapors such as chlorine bleach, ammonia, drain cleaner to avoid toxicity/ flammability (ISO, 2014). ...
Τhe most critical challenge of this paper is to briefly present the issue of human safety that has been drafted based on the specific task scenarios of a window cleaning robot. Detailed requirements are discussed for standardization that does not exist yet for this sector of robotics. In this text, the author addresses the need and concern for comprehensive precautions taken for these ubiquitous helpers since technological development have proven that they are viable commercial products and not research prototypes and platforms only for laboratories. Generally speaking, it is clear that it doesn’t exist, so far, a safety strategy for designing systems with a suitably high level of safety at the beginning of the product lifecycle. Furthermore, the author have kept a structure similar to a standard hoping that this paper should serve as a base to practically assess the safety standardization activities of these extraordinary devices. The author uses a simple example such as a robot that does window-cleaning together with climbing tasks that could be loosely defined as a representative example of collaborative robotics. Window-cleaning robots represent a subclass of collaborative robots that perform preprogrammed physical tasks for the improvement of the quality of everyday life while industrial automation applications, toy robots and military robots are excluded. The definition of collaborative robots cover a wide scope of devices used in wide ranges of anthropic environments either autonomously or via remote control and execute service tasks namely floor cleaning, pool cleaning, window cleaning and lawn mowing. They are primarily intended for support individuals under diverse circumstances used as programmable tools that can handle and carry out housekeeping issues. The author outlines a safety point of view of the problem that there is a lack of standardization regarding the need and concern of the public for trusting and accepting new robots that they are not certified. After the presentation of the category of service robotics, the author clearly presents requirements for safety standardization of window-cleaning robots.
... Since particular safety guidelines for mowing robots do not exist, the authors sug- gest that their safety-guided design should be based on standards that developed in areas of agriculture and garden equipment. In addition, the methodologies for safety for agricultural equipment [1], safety signs [6], the standard for Robots and Robot Systems [4] providing safety requirements for robot systems, as well as the "Safety certification requirements for domestic robots", proposed by the authors [7] should be made applicable to robotic lawn-mowers. Every manufacturer should follow the basic instructions summarized in the basic safety standards such as Definitions of Powered Lawn and Garden Equipment [2], Safety Specifications for Commercial Turf Care Equipment [3] and safe features according to Safety Specifications for Turf Care Equipment -Power Lawn Mowers, Lawn and Garden Tractors [5]. ...
... • User shall be informed by the manufacturer that in case of mowing robot performing on batteries, there exist electrical hazards such as fire, electrical shock or chemical burn hazard in case that battery is mistreated and explosion hazard, if the battery is incorrect- ly placed [7]. ...
Considering the rapidly expanding market for mowing robots to homeown-ers the noticeable question that arises is what are the safety-guided design require-ments that could be applied to production management via safety standards? Stand-ardization attempts to protect human during the interaction with this device. It makes an effort to confine residents by implementing more legible guidelines. There is no correct or incorrect list of hazards, only a list that customers and designers agree that is necessary to be handled. However, the requirements may differ in the design stage. All the design requirements shall be included in the physical system design of the robotic mower. In this paper, the authors believe that it is essential to put forward a comprehensive and systematic list of corrective or preventive measures in order to provide a safety checklist throughout the design stages of robot use. These safety criteria intend to minimize the chance of an accident and offer the adequate protection to users.
... Thus, it is necessary to do a detailed overview in the field and review current research works in the field as the works proposed in working group IEEE7009 [61]. Privacy is considered a recommendation [62], although the concerns on this matter are nowadays beyond all doubt. ...
Social Robots need to be safe and reliable to share their space with humans. This paper reports on the first results of a research project that aims to create more safe and reliable, intelligent autonomous robots by investigating the implications and interactions between cybersecurity and safety. We propose creating a robotic intrusion prevention system (RIPS) that follows a novel approach to detect and mitigate intrusions in cognitive social robot systems and other cyber-physical systems. The RIPS detects threats at the robotic communication level and enables mitigation of the cyber-physical threats by using System Modes to define what part of the robotic system reduces or limits its functionality while the system is compromised. We demonstrate the validity of our approach by applying it to a cognitive architecture running in a real social robot that preserves the privacy and safety of humans while facing several cyber attack situations.
... Safety and time-efficiency are two conflicting functions that need to be accomplished by the robot. It is essential to achieve a balance between both depending on the applications and requirements [14], [15]. Fig. 1 shows three sampled trajectories A, B and C with different levels of safety and time efficiency, explaining the importance of safe and time efficient robot navigation in crowded environment. ...
div>The evolution of social robots has increased with the advent of recent artificial intelligence techniques. Alongside humans, social robots play active roles in various household and industrial applications. However, the safety of humans becomes a significant concern when robots navigate in a complex and crowded environment. In literature, the safety of humans in relation to social robots has been addressed by various methods; however, most of these methods compromise the time efficiency of the robot. For robots, safety and time-efficiency are two contrast elements where one dominates the other. To strike a balance between them, a multi-reward formulation in the reinforcement learning framework is proposed, which improves the safety together with time-efficiency of the robot. The multi-reward formulation includes both positive and negative rewards that encourage and punish the robot, respectively. The proposed reward formulation is tested on state-of-the-art methods of multi-agent navigation. In addition, an ablation study is performed to evaluate the importance of individual rewards. Experimental results signify that the proposed approach balances the safety and the time-efficiency of the robot while navigating in a crowded environment.</div
... Safety and time-efficiency are two conflicting functions that need to be accomplished by the robot. It is essential to achieve a balance between both depending on the applications and requirements [14], [15]. Fig. 1 shows three sampled trajectories A, B and C with different levels of safety and time efficiency, explaining the importance of safe and time efficient robot navigation in crowded environment. ...
div>The evolution of social robots has increased with the advent of recent artificial intelligence techniques. Alongside humans, social robots play active roles in various household and industrial applications. However, the safety of humans becomes a significant concern when robots navigate in a complex and crowded environment. In literature, the safety of humans in relation to social robots has been addressed by various methods; however, most of these methods compromise the time efficiency of the robot. For robots, safety and time-efficiency are two contrast elements where one dominates the other. To strike a balance between them, a multi-reward formulation in the reinforcement learning framework is proposed, which improves the safety together with time-efficiency of the robot. The multi-reward formulation includes both positive and negative rewards that encourage and punish the robot, respectively. The proposed reward formulation is tested on state-of-the-art methods of multi-agent navigation. In addition, an ablation study is performed to evaluate the importance of individual rewards. Experimental results signify that the proposed approach balances the safety and the time-efficiency of the robot while navigating in a crowded environment.</div
... S4 -Provide at least one globally-reachable node capable of receiving run-stop messages and stopping/resetting the whole system. When one or more robots are operating in the physical environment, a common safety mechanism is to have an emergency button for blocking any hazardous operations such as robot movements, rotation of blades or rotors, or constraining joint motion (Mitka et al., 2012). We suggest to roboticists to facilitate the implementation of this safety mechanism by deploying at least one globally-reachable ROS node capable of receiving run-stop messages. ...
Context
The Robot Operating System (ROS) is the de-facto standard for robotics software. However, ROS-based systems are getting larger and more complex and could benefit from good software architecture practices.
Goal
We aim at (i) unveiling the state-of-the-practice in terms of targeted quality attributes and architecture documentation in ROS-based systems, and (ii) providing empirically-grounded guidance to roboticists about how to properly architect ROS-based systems.
Methods
We designed and conducted an observational study where we (i) built a dataset of 335 GitHub repositories containing real open-source ROS-based systems, and (ii) mined the repositories to extract and synthesize quantitative and qualitative findings about how roboticists are architecting ROS-based systems.
Results
First, we extracted an empirically-grounded overview of the state of the practice for architecting and documenting ROS-based systems. Second, we synthesized a catalog of 47 architecting guidelines for ROS-based systems. Third, the extracted guidelines were validated by 119 roboticists working on real-world open-source ROS-based systems.
Conclusion
Roboticists can use our architecting guidelines for applying good design principles to develop robots that meet quality requirements, and researchers can use our results as evidence-based indications about how real-world ROS systems are architected today, thus inspiring future research contributions.
... Navigation of service robots should consider factors such as human comfort, naturalness and sociability [10]. To ensure the human comfort, the way the robot navigates must give humans the feeling of security [11], in the sense its trajectory does not impede the natural trajectory of humans. That security is achieved simply with the robot's evasion of humans; however, the robot trajectory may still be rough, causing humans a feeling of insecurity and discomfort. ...
Nowadays, mobile robots are playing an important role in different areas of science, industry, academia and even in everyday life. In this sense, their abilities and behaviours become increasingly complex. In particular, in indoor environments, such as hospitals, schools, banks and museums, where the robot coincides with people and other robots, its movement and navigation must be programmed and adapted to robot–robot and human–robot interactions. However, existing approaches are focused either on multi-robot navigation (robot–robot interaction) or social navigation with human presence (human–robot interaction), neglecting the integration of both approaches. Proxemic interaction is recently being used in this domain of research, to improve Human–Robot Interaction (HRI). In this context, we propose an autonomous navigation approach for mobile robots in indoor environments, based on the principles of proxemic theory, integrated with classical navigation algorithms, such as ORCA, Social Momentum, and A*. With this novel approach, the mobile robot adapts its behaviour, by analysing the proximity of people to each other, with respect to it, and with respect to other robots to decide and plan its respective navigation, while showing acceptable social behaviours in presence of humans. We describe our proposed approach and show how proxemics and the classical navigation algorithms are combined to provide an effective navigation, while respecting social human distances. To show the suitability of our approach, we simulate several situations of coexistence of robots and humans, demonstrating an effective social navigation.
... Even if important efforts have been done in recent standards towards new robotic systems, certification of collaborative robots with a decisional layer is still an open issue. The authors in Mitka et al. (2012) conducted a mature work for robot certification requirements. Finally, the authors in this work (Haddadin, 2013) has presented a detailed discussion of the limitations of the current standards and proposed improvements. ...
In the era of industrialization and automation, safety is a critical factor that should be considered during the design and realization of each new system that targets operation in close collaboration with humans. Of such systems are considered personal and professional service robots which collaborate and interact with humans at diverse applications environments. In this collaboration, human safety is an important factor in the wider field of human-robot interaction (HRI) since it facilitates their harmonic coexistence. The paper at hand aims to systemize the recent literature by describing the required levels of safety during human-robot interaction, focusing on the core functions of the collaborative robots when performing specific processes. It is also oriented towards the existing methods for psychological safety during human-robot collaboration and its impact at the robot behaviour, while also discusses in depth the psychological parameters of robots incorporation in industrial and social environments. Based on the existing works on safety features that minimize the risk of HRI, a classification of the existing works into five major categories namely, Robot Perceptions for Safe HRI, Cognition-enabled robot control in HRI, Action Planning for safe navigation close to humans, Hardware safety features, and Societal and Psychological factors is also applied. Finally, the current study further discusses the existing risk assessment techniques as methods to offer additional safety in robotic systems presenting thus a holistic analysis of the safety in contemporary robots, and proposes a roadmap for safety compliance features during the development of a robotic system.
... When developing robots to work in human populated environments, an important aspect is to integrate strategies that allow robots to move around people in a safe and socially acceptable way. However, this raises new challenges in terms of defining safe robot navigation and natural and trusted Human-Robot interactions (HRI) [25]. Autonomous robots elicit certain expectations from the general public. ...
Identifying the roles and the specific social behaviours that evoke human trust towards robots is key for user acceptance. Specially, while performing tasks in the real world, such as navigation or guidance, the predictability of robot motion and predictions of user intentions facilitate interaction. We present a user study in which a humanoid-robot guided participants around a human populated environment, avoiding collisions while following a socially acceptable trajectory. We investigated which behaviours performed by a humanoid robot during a guidance task exhibited better social acceptance by people, and how robot behaviours influence their trust in a robot to safely complete a guiding task. We concluded that in general, people prefer and trust a robot that exhibits social behaviours such as talking and maintaining an appropriate safe distance from obstacles.
... Safety criticality is an aspect of MRSs where failure or malfunction of the system may cause injure to people or severe damage to equipment/property, while mission criticality is another aspect of MRSs where a failure or malfunction may lead to an unacceptable loss of mission goals. Although robotic research has made huge progress in the last decades, the aforementioned functionalities and existing solutions seem to be not-yet-ready to be used in everyday life, and in uncontrollable and unknown environments often shared with humans ( Mitka et al., 2012 ), which will be shown as part of the conclusion of this study. ...
Robotic research is making huge progress. However, existing solutions are facing a number of challenges preventing them from being used in our everyday tasks: (i) robots operate in unknown environments, (ii) robots collaborate with each other and even with humans, and (iii) robots shall never injure people or create damages. Researchers are targeting those challenges from various perspectives, producing a fragmented research landscape. We aim at providing a comprehensive and replicable picture of the state of the art from a software engineering perspective on existing solutions aiming at managing safety for mobile robotic systems. We apply the systematic mapping methodology on an initial set of 1274 potentially relevant research papers, we selected 58 primary studies and analyzed them according to a systematically-defined classification framework. This work contributes with (i) a classification framework for methods or techniques for managing safety when dealing with the software of mobile robotic systems (MSRs), (ii) a map of current software methods or techniques for software safety for MRSs, (iii) an elaboration on emerging challenges and implications for future research, and (iv) a replication package for independent replication and verification of this study. Our results confirm that generally existing solutions are not yet ready to be used in everyday life. There is the need of turn-key solutions ready to deal with all the challenges mentioned above.
... While the scope of autonomous navigation is constrained to obstacle avoidance and reaching the goal, the social one aims to navigate by additionally considering factors such as human comfort, naturalness and sociability [19]. The term human comfort refers to navigation manner that gives an individual the feeling of safety [21]. Safety can be attained from autonomous navigation by simply avoiding humans, however the derived trajectory in this case is probably a ''rough'' one and does not attach to the user the feeling of safety which leads to comfort. ...
With the robots tending to accumulate more and more capabilities beyond the level of acting in a deterministic fashion, the idea of introducing them into our every day lives seems to be closer now. Robotics systems and techniques appeared during the recent years have achieved astonishing potential to perceive and interpret their surrounding not only as low level features but also close to human understandable concepts. Such advances, in conjunction with the aspiration to incorporate robots into domestic or public places, led to the flourishing of fields dealing with their response in human presence. Following this notion, the field of social mapping was recently introduced in order to manage the shared space among robots and individuals in an ordinary fashion. This manuscript aims to systemize the recent literature by describing the required levels of robot perception, focusing on methods related to robot’s social awareness, the availability of datasets these methods can be compared with, as well as issues that remain open and need to be confronted when robots operate in close proximity with humans.
... The new ISO 10218-1, 2011 and ISO 10218-2, 2011 standards in conjunction with new standards developed for personal care service robots that are being established by WG7, touch existing robotic domains and extended them to novel domains such as the domestic robotics (Harper et al., 2009). Yet, due to the lack of the existence of international standards for such an emerging domain, the respective standard organizations in South Korea and Japan defined their own safety standards with aim to assist the rapid development of viable global markets in these conceivable future applications (Mitka et al., 2012). ...
Direct human robot interaction and cooperation in uncertain environment is recently expanding robotics research and challenging safety engineers by involving consumer product applications with high degree of autonomy, mobility and flexibility. Assessing the standardization’s requirements associated especially for Personal Care-Mobile servant (PCMS) robots is an open research question since safety standards are not available, except for ISO 13482. The objective of this study is the risk assessment on the base of ISO 13482 concerning the safety requirements established for PCMS robots using a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS). This paper is a brief and easily understood overview of PCMS robots, of ISO organisation and fundamental constraints that had already been established in ISO 13482. The challenging endeavour is the defuzzification of safety constraints applying special computer software as MATLAB in order to quantify the results of risk assessment and to achieve the overall hierarchy of the requirements.
... No specific standards however cover the domain of robotic vision systems or outdoor robotics. Mikta et al. (Mitka et al., 2012) introduced an initial idea using national standards. Some of these concepts have been introduced in newer standards for robots, such as ISO 13482 (TC 184, 2014).Functional safety standards such as ISO 25119 for agriculture (TC 23, 2010), and ISO 13482, for personal care robots (TC 184, 2014), are important for the overall functional safety of the robot, and also for the subsystems. ...
Computer vision has applications in a wide range of areas from surveillance to safety-critical control of autonomous robots. Despite the potentially critical nature of the applications and a continuous progress, the focus on safety in relation to compliance with standards has been limited. As an example, field robots are typically dependent on a reliable perception system to sense and react to a highly dynamic environment. The perception system thus introduces significant complexity into the safety-critical path of the robotic system. This complexity is often argued to increase safety by improving performance; however, the safety claims are not supported by compliance with any standards. In this paper, we present rules that enable low-level detection of quality problems in images and demonstrate their applicability on an agricultural image database. We hy-pothesise that low-level and primitive image analysis driven by explicit rules facilitates complying with safety standards, which improves the real-world applicability of existing proposed solutions. The rules are simple independent image analysis operations focused on determining the quality and usability of an image.
... Prior to human-robot coexistence in domicile and professional environments, human safety should be ensured, together with their unimpeded daily routine. Therefore, robotics engineers need to develop the appropriate methods for their artificial creatures to move around people in a steady, proper and normal manner [1]. As a result, new challenges emerge in the research topic of robot safety and navigation. ...
Advanced robotics systems in human frequented environments need to be equipped with avant-garde capabilities, so as to attain a social behavior acceptable by their human proprietors. Therefore, robots should learn and react properly when they share a common domain with humans and adjust their operation according to the activity of the people around. This paper proposes a social mapping method which makes use of 3D maps, action recognition and proxemics theory. In particular, as it moves around, the robot builds a metric map of the surroundings and arranges it in topological graphs. Meanwhile, it can detect any individual existing nearby and capitalizes on a deep learning technique to recognize its action. The recognized actions form the context-dependent social zones which are registered with specific proxemics rules to determine the robot's navigational behavior. The proposed method was assessed with an indoors navigating robot, equipped with an RGB-D sensor. The human and action recognition units showed superior operation rendering the navigation module capable of planning trajectories for the robot to move around humans.
... The incorporation of robots in human populated environments imposes the establishment of methodologies that allow them to cruise in a secure, appropriate and common manner among people. This raises new challenges in terms of research where the concept of safe navigation attains a wider interpretation and aims to facilitate human-robot coexistence beyond the established safety measures ( Mitka, Gasteratos, Kyriakoulis, & Mouroutsos, 2012 ). In mobile robotics, mapping allows robots to construct a meaningful description of their surrounding that endows them with the capacity to accomplish high-level objectives. ...
... The seamless integration of robots in human inhabited environments demands the formation of strategies that allow them to navigate in a secure, appropriate and common manner among people. This provokes new research challenges, where the concept of safe navigation attains wider dimensions and aims to facilitate human-robot cohabitation beyond the established safety strategies [1]. In mobile robotics, mapping allows robots to construct a meaningful description of their surrounding that endows them with the capacity to accomplish high-level objectives. ...
In the near future, the seamless human robot cohabitation can be achieved as long as the robots to be released in the market attain socially acceptable behavior. Therefore, robots need to learn and react appropriately, should they be able to share the same space with people and to adapt their operation to human’s activity. The goal of this work is to introduce a human aware global path planning solution for robot navigation that considers the humans presence in a domestic environment. Towards this direction, hierarchical semantic maps are built upon metric maps where the human presence is modelled using frequently visited standing positions considering also the proxemics theory. During the human’s perambulation within the domestic environment the most probable humans pathways are calculated and modeled with sequential, yet descending Gaussian kernel’s. This way, the robot reacts with safety when operating in a domestic environment taking into consideration the human presence and the physical obstacles. The method has been evaluated on a simulated environment, yet on realistic acquired data modeling a real house space and exhibited remarkable performance.
... For instance, the fact that robots move in unstructured and unknown environments makes the verification and validation (mainly through testing) non sufficient (it is impossible to guarantee that all main scenarios have been tested); the presence of users and complex non deterministic software (with decisional mechanisms) limit the use of quantitative risk analysis techniques; classical hazard analysis techniques are also not adapted to the complexity of human-robot interactions. Little work has been done about risk analysis for such systems, although it is a major challenge for robot certification (Mitka et al., 2012). Many robotics studies about estimation and treatment of collision risks exist (many references presented by Haddadin (2014)), but few are on risk analysis methods (Dogramadzi et al., 2014). ...
New safety critical systems are about to appear in our everyday life: advanced robots able to interact with humans and perform tasks at home, in hospitals, or at work. A hazardous behavior of those systems, induced by failures or extreme environment conditions, may lead to catastrophic consequences. Well-known risk analysis methods used in other critical domains (e.g., avionics, nuclear, medical, transportation), have to be extended or adapted due to the non-deterministic behavior of those systems, evolving in unstructured environments. One major challenge is thus to develop methods that can be applied at the very beginning of the development process, to identify hazards induced by robot tasks and their interactions with humans. In this paper we present a method which is based on an adaptation of a hazard identification technique, HAZOP (Hazard Operability), coupled with a system description notation, UML (Unified Modeling Language). This systematic approach has been applied successfully in research projects, and is now applied by robot manufacturers. Some results of those studies are presented and discussed to explain the benefits and limits of our method.
... The safety issue is particularly stressed when robots are working in close distance to humans in industrial [1][2][3][4][5][6] and domestic applications [7][8][9]. However, in most cases where robots' are programmed to achieve some predefined tasks, only performance indexes such as tracking error are concerned. ...
Collision avoidance is essential for safe robot manipulation. Especially with humans around, robots should work only when safety can be robustly guaranteed. In this paper, we propose using virtual impedance control for reactive, smooth, and consistent collision avoidance that interferes minimally with the original task. The virtual impedance control operates in the risk space, a vector space describing the possibilities of all forthcoming collisions, and is designed to elude all risks in a consistent response in order to create assuring human-robot interaction experiences. The proposed scheme intrinsically handles kinematic singularity and the activation of avoidance using a boundary layer defined on the spectrum of Jacobian. In cooperation with the original controller, the proposed avoidance scheme provides a proof of convergence if the original controller is stable with and without projection. In simulations and experiments, we verified the characteristics of the proposed control scheme and integrated the system with Microsoft Kinect to monitor the workspace for real-time collision detection and avoidance. The results show that the proposed approach is suitable for robot operation with humans nearby.
... Using this class of robots as part of automated workflows for cyber-physical systems (CPS) will be one of our main research topics. By applying the DROiT API robots are regarded as first class citizens within CPS workflows, which is a necessary requirement for ensuring safety of automated processes in cyber-physical environments [9]. The capability-based approach of the API integrates well with other models for describing workflow resources based on capabilities [17]. ...
Currently, small domestic service robots are on the verge of becoming a mass product for assisting end customers with everyday tasks. Despite open programming interfaces provided by robot manufacturers, many different robot systems exist that have to be programmed individually due to technical differences. The Robot Operating System (ROS) helps alleviate this problem, but provides only a low abstraction level, which hinders easy application development for entire classes of robots. This paper presents a high-level framework for uniform programming and control of small domestic service-robots that support moving to various locations, grabbing items and basic two-way communication. The framework employs robot capabilities as abstractions and thereby facilitates intuitive use and extensibility. It builds on ROS functionality but hides underlying complexity from developers. We demonstrate the applicability of the approach by various robot applications in the smart-home domain that we developed on basis of the framework.
... In other words, according to STAMP methodology, accidents could be recognised, by categorising the set of safety requirements that were ignored and answering why the control efforts were proved inaccurate in enforcing them. Following the methodology (Leveson, 2012) and considering the case of domestic robots (Mitka et al., 2012;Mitka and Mouroutsos, 2014), 14 accidents could be defined in the design of household robots: A1 A resident could be injured or house equipment could be damaged from jagged edges and corners. ...
Domestic robots are far beyond technical apparatuses; they include management of processes and structures that involve organisational and cultural aspects. These robots could be viewed as socio-technical systems since they are operating in the house and the most domestic scenarios depend on close human-robot interaction. Taking into account the fact that particular safety standards for domestic robots are not available, in this paper, we propose a new approach to a safety standard developed using a novel methodology. This methodology can be applied to other standardisation activities and is based on powerful hazard analysis technique developed by MIT. It goes far beyond covering only component failure, human error and software issues, by including safety design constraints, management of the system, cooperation among manufacturer, user and government, paradigms from industrial robots safety, accident/incident investigation. All the aforementioned non-technical aspects of the system could not be ignored. Identifying all the involved parameters, technical or not, this paper proposes a new approach to a safety standard for domestic robots, filling a gap not only in the standards domain but most importantly in the approach.
... Beginning with an extensive set of system hazards, usually result in a confused hazard analysis even in the case of the most simple systems. The preliminary hazards might be defined as [MGKM12]: ...
The use of mowing robots in anthropic environment is increasing, leading to the call for specific safety standards. This is a challenging endeavour, however, because the user must usually be placed in the robot's workspace and the residents must frequently interact with the robot. Although specific safety standards for mowing robots do not yet exist, there are several mowing device standards and well-established principles of risk analysis and safety design that can and should be applied. This paper presents an overview of safety constraints for mowing robots, starting with a discussion of high-level system safety requirements, followed by methods for risk assessment (or hazard analysis) and a presentation of STAMP (Systems-Theoretic Accident Modelling and Processes) as a safety strategy.
... The development of control strategies for the unmanned guidance of mobile platforms has been shown to be very important within the robotics field. Among its more relevant applications, we can find mobile robots performing domestic tasks (Cirillo, Karlsson, and Saffiotti, 2012;DiGiampaolo and Martinelli, 2012;Mitka, Gasteratos, and Kyriakoulis, 2012), airport surveillance and maintenance (Sadjadi and Jarrah, 2012), or museum displays (Cariou, Lenain, Thuilot, and Berducat, 2009). Furthermore, electric wheelchairs are currently being robotized in order to be used autonomously and thus assist the patient in daily tasks (Cooper, Grindle, and Vazquez, 2012;Larin, Dennis, and Stansfield, 2012;Morales, Somolinos, and Cerrada, 2012). ...
A major issue in the automatic guidance of vehicles is the design of control laws dedicated to the specific mobile platform used. Thus, if the model associated with the mobile platform or its constraints change, a new control law must be designed. In this paper, the problem of designing trajectory tracking controllers for unmanned vehicles is addressed. The methodology proposed here is an algebraic approach for obtaining optimum and stable trajectory tracking controllers for nonholonomic vehicles. Such an algebraic formulation makes the proposal suitable for embedded applications. The stability and optimality of the proposed controllers design method is theoretically proven for both bicycle-type and unicycle-type mobile robots, although the methodology can be extended to other types of unmanned vehicles. Four tests were carried out in this work in order to show the advantages of the proposal: the step discontinuity test, the curvature test, the real world test, and navigation under disturbances in the control actions. The results obtained were compared with four trajectory tracking controllers previously published in the literature. Additionally, an agricultural application is included in order to show the performance of the proposed controller when applied to a service unit within an agricultural environment. Field experiments demonstrating the capabilities of our proposal are also reported and discussed.
... Safety features such as power pack or sealed batteries shall continue to be active in order to protect residents under all emergency circumstances. User shall be warned by the manufacturer that regarding surveillance robot functioning on batteries, there exist electrical hazards such as fire, electrical surge or chemical hazard in case that battery is misused and explosion hazard, if the power pack is improperly handled [1]. ...
Safety standards describes a compromise as to what comprises best practice in achieving safety in these systems, and what comprises best practice in the attitude of the design stage. Domestic home-surveillance robots are far beyond a group of technical artifacts: they are a set of hierarchical structure, engineering management of procedures, process models that involve the culture of the manufacturer that produce them. These household robots could be considered as socio-technical systems since they are capable of inspecting the house, which is inhabited, by groups of people and human-robot interactions constitute basic functions of any of these robotic systems. Since specific safety standards for home-surveillance robots are not available, we propose that their safety standards should be carried out on the base of STAMP that is discussed here. STAMP accomplishes the whole range of management of a system. It goes far beyond covering only the hardware and the related process models of safer systems. It includes designing and production stage, management of a socio-technical system such as the coexistence human - robot at home, the relation between manufacturer, user and government that results from safety standards with respective safety requirements, interface from industrial safety to domestic safety, effect of the use of safety standards on accident analysis. All the above non-technical features of this system could not be disregarded. With the aim to sustain the ultimate objective of this study, i.e. putting forward a systemic method that combines worldwide, existing principles applied at industrial robots with a new concept concerning specific socio-technical system’s issues.
In the years since the first robot was patented in 1961, robots and robotic systems have proliferated through many sectors of the economy including manufacturing, logistical support, medical technology, law enforcement, and military applications. Advances in digital technologies, as well as development of core technologies in camera systems, communication systems, sensors, and displays, are changing the capabilities and possible applications of robotics across industries. Robots have the potential to improve quality of life by performing tasks that are fatiguing, infeasible, or dangerous for humans to perform. As robots gains broader applications, there are concerns about potential unintended consequences such as safety, health, and fairness issues for workers. Robots present new challenges and new opportunities for occupational safety and health professionals. This chapter examines the potential hazards and risk‐reduction benefits of using modern robots in the workplace.
Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used in HRI research by including social robots in health-care interventions by virtue of their ability to engage human users both social and emotional dimensions. Research projects on this topic exist all over the globe in the USA, Europe, and Asia. All of these projects have the overall ambitious goal to increase the well-being of a vulnerable population. Typical work in RAT is performed using remote controlled robots; a technique called Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ). The robot is usually controlled, unbeknownst to the patient, by a human operator. However, WoZ has been demonstrated to not be a sustainable technique in the long-term. Providing the robots with autonomy (while remaining under the supervision of the therapist) has the potential to lighten the therapists burden, not only in the therapeutic session itself but also in longer-term diagnostic tasks. Therefore, there is a need for exploring several degrees of autonomy in social robots used in therapy. Increasing the autonomy of robots might also bring about a new set of challenges. In particular, there will be a need to answer new ethical questions regarding the use of robots with a vulnerable population, as well as a need to ensure ethically-compliant robot behaviours. Therefore, in this workshop we want to gather findings and explore which degree of autonomy might help to improve health-care interventions and how we can overcome the ethical challenges inherent to it.
Mobile robots for greenhouse automation are not yet used commercially, but scientific research are being performed in various aspects of using robots in greenhouses. For now, plant examination for diseases and insects, spraying and watering tasks are mostly considered. In all cases, a robot should be able to orient itself globally in the environment and locally relative to the working objects e.g. plants, obstacles and other robots if a multi robot system is assumed. In greenhouses, proximity sensors are used for simple object detection and distance measurement with both metallic and non-metallic materials as well as plants. Consequently, capacitive, ultrasound and optical type sensors can be used. It is known that they are affected by varying temperature, humidity and moisture conditions. In this research, we have used a specialized microclimate chamber to perform experiments in a modeled greenhouse environment with controlled temperature, relative humidity. The controlled environmental parameters were combined to represent real world greenhouse conditions. Three types of materials were used for detection (WxHxD): 1 mm steel plate 255 × 380 mm, 1 mm ABS 245 × 330 mm plastic plate, and 118 × 180 × 60 mm plastic container with water. The environment and the type of the detectable object were used as independent variables. The examined parameters, i.e. the dependent variables of the digital type sensors, were the maximum and minimum detection limits and hysteresis. A statistical analysis was performed to find the factors which may affect the reliability of proximity sensors measurements in greenhouse environment.
In this paper, we present an efficient human safety framework of robotic systems that guaranties human safety in human-robot shared workspace. The general framework is composed of three stages: 1) human detection and tracking algorithms are used to detect and track the human in unknown dynamic environments; 2) human social signals is estimated; 3) human states and their social signals are integrated in a estimation model, so-called dynamic social zone (DSZ). The dynamic social zone is embedded into the navigation control guiding the mobile robots to move safely in human populated environments. The experimental results indicate that the proposed framework is able to ensure human safety in human-robot shared workspaces.
This chapter looks at the problem of resource scarcity, and the development of medical machines; in particular, the research, development and population wide implementation (RD&I) of complex medical machines. It raises a series of questions about how we make decisions regarding the distribution of scarce healthcare resources and posits that we ought to pay special attention to the distribution of resources for RD&I underpinning complex medical machines. This chapter covers some common issues in allocation of healthcare resources to then focus on the RD&I of complex medical machines as an important area requiring discussion. When the needs or demands for medical treatment significantly outstrip the available resources, decisions must be made about how to distribute these resources, recognizing that not all needs will be satisfied immediately and some may not be satisfied at all [9, p. 275].
Recent developments facilitated the integration of industrial robots into hybrid work cells in order to share a common workspace with the human worker. Besides, the worldwide demographic change leads to an increasing need for hybrid assembly solutions that represent a promising solution for encountering the challenges of the future and the rising demand for flexible and reactive production systems. Nevertheless, the physical human safety within human-robot co-operation represents the key requirement. This paper introduces a model-based safety-system for co-operative robots using an onlinemodel of the robot work cell. Based on a test bench, generic functional specifications and important safety aspects are derived, highlighted and discussed, namely data processing, hardware defects and test structures are covered.
The area of robotic surgical systems has to deal with several important safety aspects to ensure that the patient and the Operating Room staff are safe. A robotic surgical system has to fulfill specific safety requirements and to ensure that the system reacts like its specification. To this end, a verification process is necessary. In this paper an architecture for robotic surgery is modeled using the framework of Hybrid Input/Output Automata (HIOAs). A case study based on a surgical robotic operation scenario is presented and modeled using HIOAs. Exploiting the modularity and compositionality theory of HIOAs, the verification of the system is performed.
Contemporary mobile robots should exhibit enhanced capacities, which allow them self-localization and semantic interpretation as they move into an unexplored environment. The coexistence of accurate SLAM and place recognition can provide a descriptive and adaptable navigation model. In this paper such a two-layer navigation scheme is introduced suitable for indoor environments. The low layer comprises a 3D SLAM system based solely on an RGB-D sensor, whilst the high one employs a novel content-based representation algorithm, suitable for spatial abstraction. In course of robot’s locomotion, salient visual features are detected and they shape a bag-of-features problem, quantized by a Neural Gas to code the spatial information for each scene. The learning procedure is performed by an SVM classifier able to accurately recognize multiple dissimilar places. The two layers mutually interact with a semantically annotated topological graph augmenting the cognition attributes of the integrated system. The proposed framework is assessed on several datasets, exhibiting remarkable accuracy. Moreover, the appearance based algorithm produces semantic inferences suitable for labeling unexplored environments.
This paper presents a geometric representation for human operators and robotic manipulators which cooperate in the development of flexible tasks. The main goal of this representation is the implementation of real-time proximity queries which are used by safety strategies for avoiding dangerous collisions between humans and robotic manipulators. This representation is composed of a set of bounding volumes based on swept-sphere line primitives which encapsulate their links more precisely than previous sphere-based models. The radius of each bounding volume does not only represent the size of the encapsulated link, but it also includes an estimation of its motion. The radii of these dynamic bounding volumes are obtained from an algorithm which computes the linear velocity of each link. This algorithm has been implemented for the development of a safety strategy in a real human-robot interaction task.
In this paper, the current international ISO activities on robots are introduced; ISO TC 184/SC 2, which has been active in developing standards for industrial robots and has widened its scope recently to include service robots as well as industrial robots. The aim of this paper is to introduce the existing standards and the new standards to be developed in SC 2, so that anyone who has interest in these emerging robotic areas could have information on the progress and the future planned developments.
Future homes will be populated with large numbers of robots with diverse functionalities, ranging from chore robots to el- der care robots to entertainment robots. While household robots will offer numerous benefits, they also have the po- tential to introduce new security and privacy vulnerabilit ies into the home. Our research consists of three parts. First, t o serve as a foundation for our study, we experimentally ana- lyze three of today's household robots for security and pri- vacy vulnerabilities: the WowWee Rovio, the Erector Spy- kee, and the WowWee RoboSapien V2. Second, we synthe- size the results of our experimental analyses and identify key lessons and challenges for securing future household robots. Finally, we use our experiments and lessons learned to con- struct a set of design questions aimed at facilitating the fu - ture development of household robots that are secure and preserve their users' privacy.
This paper presents a strategy for ensuring safety during human-robot interaction in real time. A measure of danger during the interaction is explicitly computed, based on factors affecting the impact force during a potential collision between the human and the robot This danger index is then used as an input to real-time trajectory generation when the index exceeds a predefined threshold. The danger index is formulated to produce stable motion in the presence of multiple surrounding obstacles. A motion strategy to minimize the danger index is developed for articulated multi degree of freedom robots. Simulations and experiments demonstrate the efficacy of this approach
Rahimi, M., 1986. Systems safety for robots: An energy barrier analysis. Journal of Occupational Accidents, 8: 127–138.The need for a comprehensive study of hazards caused by robot work environments is stressed. Based on previous data and robot accident reports, major factors contributing to robot accidents are classified and listed. System safety is introduced as an appropriate approach to analyze safety of semiautomated and automated robot systems. A general procedure for conducting system safety analysis is presented. Energy Barrier Analysis (EBA), a qualitative system safety technique, is applied to a general model of human—robot system. Major concepts of EBA are integrated in a stepwise approach for evaluating and designing robot safety systems. As the result of this application, specific solutions and recommendations are discussed.
Consideration of the environmental, commercial and legal constraints on a practical home vacuum-cleaning robot suggests that the best configura-tion is a compact single-purpose vehicle designed to map and follow a deliberate path. This config-uration, suitably equipped with the necessary external and internal sensors, serves to define the AI requirements for mapping, path following, contingency handling and user interface.
Safety is a critical success factor for consumer acceptance of domestic robotic products. Some researchers have adopted the head injury criterion (HIC) as absolute safety norm. However, this norm covers only part of the safety risk. In many cases skin damage (e.g. cuts, wounds, etc) can be a more serious risk. This article shows how to work towards a novel absolute safety measure for evaluating the shape and material choices of a robotic design w.r.t. skin damage. The proposed safety norm evaluates the situation of an unintended uncontrolled collision of a robotic part against a human. Maximum curvatures of the exterior robotic shape are approximated as a sphere in contact with the human skin (locally approximated as a flat surface). This local spheric approximation of the impact contact is used to predict maximum tensile stress during impact of the robotic part on the human. Robotic designs that include points for which the tensile strength of the skin is exceeded will cause at least skin fracture and are therefore considered intrinsically unsafe. While in general applicable, this paper specifically addresses how to apply the proposed norm in the case of safety evaluation of robotic manipulators.
The article consists of a Powerpoint presentation on application of risk management for medical devices. The areas discussed include: safety assessment of programmable electrical medical systems, covering product development life-cycle, including software life-cycle, and risk assessment of medical devices
Despite the fact that several manufacturers of service robots launched their innovations into the market, worldwide guidelines or regulations concerning the safety aspects of service robots are not yet available. However the general principles and methodologies of safety of machinery (e.g., ISO/IEC Guide 51, partly ISO14121, ISO12100) could be implemented to a certain degree. The safety of seven service robots as an emerging technology was verified by safety professionals of “NPO – the Safety Engineering Laboratory” a Non Profit Organization. NPO verified the “Critical Hazards” for each service robot mentioned by the respective manufacturers. For those cases, both the “As Low As Reasonably Practicable” principle and the “Reasonable Alternative Design” standard were applied for judging if the risk associated with the Critical Hazards were tolerable or not and if state of the art measures for reducing the risk were applied adequately. These experiences will help to establish guidelines for the safety of service robots as an emerging technology in the future.
In this paper, we put forward a systematic method to analyze, control and evaluate the safety issues of medical robotics. We created a safety model that consists of three axes to analyze safety factors. Software and hardware are the two material axes. The third axis is the policy that controls all phases of design, production, testing and application of the robot system. The policy was defined as hazard identification and safety insurance control (HISIC) that includes seven principles: definitions and requirements, hazard identification, safety insurance control, safety critical limits, monitoring and control, verification and validation, system log and documentation.HISIC was implemented in the development of a robot for urological applications that was known as URObot. The URObot is a universal robot with different modules adaptable for 3D ultrasound image-guided interstitial laser coagulation, radiation seed implantation, laser resection, and electrical resection of the prostate. Safety was always the key issue in the building of the robot. The HISIC strategies were adopted for safety enhancement in mechanical, electrical and software design. The initial test on URObot showed that HISIC had the potential ability to improve the safety of the system. Further safety experiments are being conducted in our laboratory.
Japan has the largest world market share of industrial robots and also two fatal accidents due to robots. Ergonomics points of view should be applied to robotics to prevent new types of accidents.The concern of this paper is to explain Japan's situation concerning the installation of robotics and current safety regulations. Three experiments about the possibility of unsafe behaviour are described, and the man-robot system failure is analysed based on Fault Tree Analysis and the actual data. The appropriate safety measures are compared in terms of their cost-effectiveness. Finally, ergonomics points of view are provided to prevent accidents due to industrial robots.
For a workplace to be safe, the careful implementation of safety measures is necessary. In this paper, several robot system safety techniques are reviewed, and a procedure analysis is presented for the planning, installation, and operation stages of adding a robot to the workplace. The analysis covers safety measures that should be taken, risks of not taking them, causes of the risks, and corrective or preventive measures. The resulting safety measure checklist can serve as a procedure for implementing current standards or guidelines. Implementing these safety measures should reduce accidents and provide redundant protection to the operators. Also discussed is the need for further research on the safe use of robots (i.e., system safety analysis for manufacturing systems, human error prediction and prevention, and robot performance evaluation procedures). The information from that research will improve the procedure analysis.
The most critical challenge for Personal Robotics is to manage the issue of human safety and yet provide the physical capability to perform useful work. This paper describes a novel concept for a mobile, 2-armed, 25-degree-of- freedom system with backdrivable joints, low mechanical impedance, and a 5 kg payload per arm. System identification, design safety calculations and performance evaluation studies of the first prototype are included, as well as plans for a future development.
This paper presents a strategy for ensuring safety during human–robot interaction in real time. A measure of danger during the interaction is explicitly computed, based on factors affecting the impact force during a potential collision between the human and the robot. This danger index is then used as an input to real-time trajectory generation when the index exceeds a predefined threshold. The danger index is formulated to produce a provably stable, fast response in the presence of multiple surrounding obstacles. A motion strategy to minimize the danger index is developed for articulated multi-degree-of-freedom robots. Simulations and experiments show the efficacy of this approach.
This paper proposes an architecture for an autonomous robot designed to perform tasks in a partially structured domestic environment. Particular attention is given to the roles of symbolic reasoning for planning and plan execution in such a robot.An architecture is proposed in which manipulation, mobility and perception are performed by a hierarchy of asynchronous processes. The hierarchies for manipulation, mobility and perception are controlled by a knowledge based “supervisor” which plans and executes domestic tasks.Planning tasks is presented as a problem of search. A review of heuristic search techniques is presented. In this review, the introduction of knowledge in the form of heuristics and subgoals is shown to greatly reduce the computational complexity of planning. Problems related to plan execution are then discussed and a toxonomy of plan execution systems is proposed. The difficulty of plan execution is illustrated using the task “clear the dishes for the dining room table”. The conclusion discusses the state of the art in each of the areas manipulation, mobility, perception, and symbolic reasoning as it applies to an autonomous domestic robot. The final conclusion asserts that progress requires experimentation with integrated systems.
A new construction method using robots is spreading widely among construction sites in order to overcome labour shortages and frequent construction accidents. Along with economical efficiency, safety is a very important factor for evaluating the use of construction robots in construction sites. However, the quantitative evaluation of safety is difficult compared with that of economical efficiency. In this study, we suggested a safety evaluation methodology by defining the 'worker' and 'work conditions' as two risk factors, defining the 'worker' factor as posture load and the 'work conditions' factor as the work environment and the risk exposure time. The posture load evaluation reflects the risk of musculoskeletal disorders which can be caused by work posture and the risk of accidents which can be caused by reduced concentration. We evaluated the risk factors that may cause various accidents such as falling, colliding, capsizing, and squeezing in work environments, and evaluated the operational risk by considering worker exposure time to risky work environments. With the results of the evaluations for each factor, we calculated the general operational risk and deduced the improvement ratio in operational safety by introducing a construction robot. To verify these results, we compared the safety of the existing human manual labour and the proposed robotic labour construction methods for manipulating large glass panels.
An industrial robot safety experiment was performed to find out how quickly subjects responded to an unexpected robot motion at different speeds of the robot arm, and how frequently they failed to detect a motion that should have been detected. Robotics technicians risk being fatally injured if a robot should trap them against a fixed object. The value of the experimentation lies in its ability to show that this risk can be reduced by a design change. If the robot is moving at a slow speed, during programming and troubleshooting tasks, then the worker has sufficient time to actuate an emergency stop device before the robot can reach the person. The dependent variable in the experiment was the overrun distance (beyond an expected stopping point) that a robot arm travelled before a person actuated a stop pushbutton. Results of this experiment demonstrated that the speed of the robot arm and the implied decision cost for hitting an emergency stop button had a significant effect on human reaction time. At a fairly high level of ambient lighting (560 lux), fixed-level changes in the luminance contrast between the robot arm and its background did not significantly affect human reaction time.
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