Robot assistants in manufacturing and home environments: Design and technologies for safety and dependability

Industrial robot safety has been well regulated by comprehensive international safety standards. However, no specific guidelines have been established for safety conformable designs and operation of robot assistants which physically interact with humans. During the last years the notion of dependability of human-robot interaction has been widely discussed. Dependability not only involves the safety of a robot system but also its operating robustness, particularly the system's availability, security, reliability, and maintainability in every day's operating scenarios. These additional requirements have motivated further research towards fault prevention, fault tolerance and fault forecasting in operating environments. This paper and the work described herein address the development of technologies and system designs aiming for safe human-robot interaction. Three complementing aspects are highlighted: (I) Safe system designs on the basis of practical scenarios in home and manufacturing environments, (II) Availability and current trends towards safety components for advanced robots, (III) Monitoring of robot workspaces and detection human motion.