Safety Considerations in the Design and Validation of Autonomous Machine Systems

The advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, and communication technology are making industrial applications increasingly autonomous. For manufacturing companies this means transformation towards digitized enterprise that requires the development of core elements, such as building the data ecosystem, choosing the right techniques and tools, integrating technology into workplace processes, and adopting an open, collaborative culture. The rapid introduction of new technologies, combined with increasing human-machine interaction, brings along new and modified safety risks. For most industrial machine systems, the lack of existing standards and best practices further complicates the design and validation of these applications. In this paper, we identify the focal challenges in the design process of safe autonomous machine systems from a systems engineering perspective. As a result, the methodology and tools to be used in various phases of the design process are discussed. The needs for extensions to the systems engineering approach are also considered.