AUTOMATION
With more technological advances in automatic crane control, are there proper safety regulations or is there need for a review? Julian Champkin investigates.
W
e live in an age of rapid – indeed breathtaking – technical development. The breakthrough
technology of five years ago may even be obsolete, today. It is a truism that laws and regulation lag technical developments. The most obvious example of this is
the autonomous car. They have been long promised and are now on the road. Driverless taxis are operating in half a dozen cities across the US and in China. If a driverless car causes an accident, there is no driver to take the blame. So, who do you sue? The passenger? The owner? The car manufacturer? The software maker? And – to reduce it to a perhaps trivial level but one that has already caused real problems for autonomous taxi companies – if a driverless electric car parks illegally while queuing up to charge, to whom does the warden give the ticket? Waymo’s driverless taxis got 589 parking tickets in San Francisco last year. Issues of legality and responsibility in
automated industrial lifting might seem less extreme, but they are just as real and will become even more so. Smart systems, Internet of Things (IoT), AI and machine learning are penetrating factories and manufacturing plants, controlling and automating all the processes within it, therefore, controlling, among other things, the lifting equipment that is a part of those processes. Even small-capacity electric hoists are candidates for automation. As Demag point out in this context, “Automation of a lifting process involves many components...An electric chain hoist is an excellent choice for the lifting axis up to 5t. For heavier loads, electric wire rope hoists can be used.” But who is responsible for the operation of such automated hoists – and for the operator’s safety?
At one level, the answer is simple – and it does not matter that legislation has yet to include any reference to AI or machine learning. LOLER, the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998, sets the regulations in the UK and these have the force of law. That AI had not been dreamed of back in 1998 is irrelevant. According to LOLER, then, if a worker is
injured by, say, a load swinging from a manual chain hoist, or crushed by a load dropped from it, the owner of the factory is responsible. They should have ensured that the equipment was properly installed, maintained and in safe condition, and that its operator had been properly trained to operate it.
If the hoist that caused the injury was an old fashioned electric chain hoist, controlled in the traditional and transparent way by, say, an operator with a pendant push-button, with no digitalisation or smart features, then exactly the same thing is true – the owner is responsible for any injury it causes. And if it is a fully autonomous, smart and
AI-controlled hoist that causes the accident? A hoist that has learned by machine learning the most efficient way of operating, the most efficient order in which to carry out tasks, the most efficient speeds, accelerations, lifting heights and so on? Legally, and probably morally, the answer is the same: the owner of the hoist is responsible. They should have ensured that the hoist and its operations were safe. It is here that a practical problem – though not perhaps a legal one – arises. AI is not transparent. Nobody knows how it works. It teaches itself. It takes hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of examples, and works out the optimal efficiencies that it will perform – the working out of which is so mathematically complex that human beings cannot follow its logic. Yet human beings are still morally, and legally, responsible for its actions. The provisions of LOLER still apply as the owner of the machine must take all reasonable precautions and as far as it’s possible, make sure that the machine is not dangerous. This matters because the AI-controlled
factory is already with us, and hoist manufacturers make proud boasts of the interconnectivity of their machines. Software algorithms and AI already perform data monitoring, predictive maintenance, energy efficiency calculations and the like. Process cranes in particular operate autonomously, with no human operator, in thousands of power plants, waste plants and steel mills throughout the world. So, are the regulations and the law desperately old fashioned and out of touch that they need revision?
Playing catch up
Ben Dobbs, head of global standards and legislation at LEEA (Lifting Equipment Engineers Association), is well placed to comment on some of these issues. “I guess the overall answer is that users are not yet fully aware of the implications of such technology and the pros and cons of it,” he says. He offers the following opinions, explaining that it is a
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