Safe human-robot-collaboration-introduction and experiment using ISO/TS 15066

The use of industrial robots for human-robot-collaborative applications continually gains in significance. The advantages of both human and robots can be combined to minimize the disadvantages. Human skills like cognition, adaptation or tactile abilities can be added with robot strengths like speed, force or precision. Besides its advantages this development also cause new challenges regarding safety measures, particularly to ensure humans integrity working closed to or even with heavy robots. Therefore in February 2016 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published a new specification ISO/TS 15066 (Robots and robotic devices - Collaborative robots), a supplement to EN ISO 10218 (Robots and robotic devices - Safety requirements for industrial robots). To get a comprehensive overview of the new specification this paper first gives an introduction into safety standards and guidelines for risk assessment in general and industrial robots specifically, followed by a more detailed insight into ISO/TS 15066. An experiment with an exemplary standard collaboration scenario demonstrates its usage. A subsequent discussion about the illustrated residual hazard potential in case of an incident despite compliance with ISO/TS 15066 and a prospect on future approaches to achieve more safety within human-robot-collaboration will complete this paper.

I. Introduction

Nowadays manufacturing moves from conventional static production lines with large lot sizes to more flexible and easily adaptable factory units to manufacture or assemble small batches or even individual constructions. In the course of this process collaboration of humans and robots become more and more important [1], [2]. The exclusive use of industrial robots separated from workers by physical safe guards was extended by operation modes, where workers act very proximate to or even collaborative with robots (Fig. 1). As a consequence existing standards and requirements regarding safety are no longer sufficient.