Dynamic safety system for collaboration of operators and industrial robots

Timo Malm*, Timo Salmi, Ilari Marstio, Jari Montonen

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    19 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    There is an increasing need to have a safety system, which allows safe collaboration of operators and industrial robots. Industrial robots are powerful and therefore dangerous impacts and crashes need to be prevented by keeping safe distance between moving robot and the operator. Safe distance can be achieved by monitoring the position and speed of the robot and the position of the operator. Separation distance, speeds and performance of the control system, sensors and actuators are regulated by standards, which must be followed. VTT has developed a dynamic safety system, which monitors the speed and separation between persons and the robot in order to keep the stopping distance of the robot small enough to avoid impacts. The dynamic safety system enables safe continuous working beside the robot and automated restarting after a safety-rated monitored stop. An assistance system is applied to switch safety modes of the robot according to separation distance. Configuring and validating the safety system are safety-critical and time-consuming phases of design. Therefore, a configuration tool is required to get a coherent configuration, which support validation process.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)61-71
    JournalOpen Engineering
    Volume9
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 7 Mar 2019
    MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

    Funding

    The main funder of the project is Business Finland Oy. In addition, seven companies at the current project and six more at the previous project have supported the development of the dynamic safety system together with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

    Keywords

    • safeguarding
    • speed and separation monitoring
    • protective device
    • requirements
    • Safeguarding

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