Robots Confront Safety Standards

An army of user-friendly robots is headed for the factory floor, but it might have to climb over cumbersome safety regulations, according to two pioneers in the field speaking at a workshop Tuesday in San Jose, Calif.

"There's a big market for automating small companies," said Esben Ostergaard, chief technologist at Universal Robots, a Danish company now selling as many as 150 robots a month. Safety regulations that demand multi-page risk assessments and complex danger mitigation schemes threaten progress, he said.

He compared today's safety standards to an 1861 law in England that required all cars to have a person walk in front of them carrying a red flag.

"We can't have systems that are so safe they are useless," he said, noting existing and pending ISO standards. "Our take on safety is it's a moving target."

Read the rest of this article on EE|Times.