Deliberative safety for industrial intelligent human–robot collaboration: Regulatory challenges and solutions for taking the next step towards industry 4.0

Abstract

In previous scholarly literature, safety is understood as a main obstacle for introducing human–robot collaboration in industrial production. This interdisciplinary paper is concerned with the safety and regulation of human–robot collaboration and contribute to this debate through a case study of stakeholders in Sweden, exploring the views of the involved stakeholders which is largely absent in previous research literature. The case study concludes that while stressing some potential benefits, stakeholders within the industry are generally reluctant to human–robot collaboration. Current regulation and safety standards are understood to be one of the prominent obstacles to such solutions. Based on the perspectives of the stakeholders as well as an analysis of current regulation and safety standards, the paper identifies the following problems with current regulation: (i) existing categories and conceptualizations used to guide safety evaluation are problematic, (ii) intelligence and autonomous aspects of collaborative systems are not sufficiently addressed, (iii) current standards do not enable evaluation of the trade off between safety, efficiency and flexibility, and (iv) the regulation has a lack of focus on active safety and using the control system as a safety measure. In an attempt to address these identified problems, the difference between traditional collaborative robots and intelligent human–robot collaboration is analyzed in the paper and a new safety approach is suggested, called Deliberative safety , which allows the humans and robots to switch between different safety measures based on the need for flexibility or efficiency to reach production goals. While considering system performance, we propose a taxonomy to better support the design of deliberative safety as well as five safety measures to use in a deliberative safety approach. These measures include available measures like perimeter safety, zone safety and reactive safety to more advanced measures like planned and active safety, and when used together, they can enable intelligent human–robot collaboration. • Existing conceptualizations used to guide safety evaluation of HRC are problematic. • Safety standards do not enable evaluation of the trade off between safety, efficiency and flexibility. • New safety approach called Deliberative Safety , allow changes of safety measures during operation. • These changes are based on the need and intention of both the humans and robots. • New safety measures better suited for intelligent automation based on key performance indicators.