Systems Engineering Approach to Risk Assessment of Automated Mobile Work Machine Applications

Abstract

Mobile work machines are today equipped with automatic functionalities. There are fully autonomous mobile work machines operating in factories, mines and harbor terminals. Needs for better productivity, better mobile work machine utility and higher work quality in work sites is driving the work process management towards automated production instead of improving the management of separate manual work machine operations. Safety risks related to automated mobile work machine applications are dependent on several operation condition factors such as mode of operation, level of automation, human–machine–interaction, performed work task and working environment. System safety approach that has been developed among others for aviation, military, process industry and railroad systems is introduced as a solution for safety risk management for complex mobile work machine applications. An application of systems engineering based approach, supporting tools and methods have been developed in close co-operation with mobile work machine manufactures, system suppliers and system end users for automated mobile work machine applications. This chapter describes the developed safety engineering methodology and some evaluation results based on experiences from industrial case studies.