Methods for considering safety in design of robotics applications featuring human-robot collaboration

Collaborative robotics have a large potential for use in industrial applications. Nevertheless, this potential is currently unrealized and one of the reasons is the challenges in planning and designing while considering the safety requirements of these new types of applications. In this article, we will use an exemplary application to describe the many design decisions that are made during the planning of an industrial application featuring human-robot collaboration. Our approach uses model-based systems engineering concepts for considering safety-related aspects of the application during the design phase. Using a software implementation based on our method, we will then compare design results including required floor space and cycle time for the same exemplary application and discuss the implications of our approach for planning other robotics tasks. With our method, the required separation area around the robot was reduced by up to over 66% for a situation featuring a specific robot to be operated at 100% of its maximum possible speed.