Navigating Robot Safety

(Robot safety programs may include, but not be limited to, the items listed here)

It’s easier to avoid an accident when you know what might cause one. The ANSI/RIA 15.06 Robot Safety Standard provides industrial safety requirements for industrial robot manufacture, integration and installation, and methods of safeguarding personnel, among other considerations. Use it as a starting point for analyzing risks and predicting outcomes of various behaviors. Then, make sure the risks, and ways to minimize them, are well known to employees. 

 

Are your lights working? The brakes?  You’re going to want to make sure before you start out on a drive, and you’re going to want to make sure before you start up production too. Are you parking on a hill? Better use your parking brake, and turn your tires toward the curb. Apply these lessons in to the industry – know the condition of your machines, and the general environment before taking off.

 

Machines often contain a lot of moving devices and a lot of energy, be it your vehicle or your robot. When you’re working outside of normal operations, for items such as service or maintenance, those useful machine movements may now put you in harms way. Among other training programs, ensure employees follow an energy control program for isolating and disabling all potential energy sources to help prevent moveable devices from moving unexpectedly during service or maintenance. 

 

“If you can’t see my mirrors, I can’t see you,” is a sign we should all be familiar with on the road, meaning we are potentially in a truck’s blind spot. On the production line, we need to make a similar assumption  – that we might not be seen, and that others are in our blind spots as well. The use of intuitive indicators and lockout and tag-out labels provide visual cues to reduce blind spots. 

 

Maintaining safe spacing by not tailgating, and allowing tailgaters to pass are both good safety practices when driving. Similarly, it’s important to establish a restricted space around robots, using barriers and devices that halt robot motion if that space is entered. Placing controls outside of the safeguarded space, in full view of the robot and work envelop, and developing a robot maintenance position, are other methods to help humans and robots maintain safe spacing. Use multiple methods to maintain a safe distance between industrial robots and humans.