A procedure analysis for robot system safety

For a workplace to be safe, the careful implementation of safety measures is necessary. In this paper, several robot system safety techniques are reviewed, and a procedure analysis is presented for the planning, installation, and operation stages of adding a robot to the workplace. The analysis covers safety measures that should be taken, risks of not taking them, causes of the risks, and corrective or preventive measures. The resulting safety measure checklist can serve as a procedure for implementing current standards or guidelines. Implementing these safety measures should reduce accidents and provide redundant protection to the operators. Also discussed is the need for further research on the safe use of robots (i.e., system safety analysis for manufacturing systems, human error prediction and prevention, and robot performance evaluation procedures). The information from that research will improve the procedure analysis.