Safety approaches for autonomous mobile machines in industrial environments

The development of automated mobile machines towards autonomous operation is proceeding rapidly in many industrial sectors. New technologies and their increasing complexity set challenges for designing safe and reliable machinery and systems. One big challenge is to manage system-level safety and reliability risks with cost-effective solutions in applications where autonomous machinery, manual machines and employees aims to work in the same area. Three safety design approaches for autonomous machinery are introduced and discussed through the requirements and constraints imposed by system operating concepts and operating environments. The key element in machine autonomy is adaptability to dynamically changing environment based on the available information. Current safety engineering methods developed for automated machinery do not cover or consider autonomy aspects like dynamic risk assessment or independent decision-making. Safety standards for the design of autonomous machinery applications are also discussed.