WORKPLACE SAFETY
NAVIGATING UPCOMING CHANGES TO COBOT SAFETY REGULATIONS
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Matt Androsiuk of Cobots and Machinery Safety (FANUC UK’s cobot safety partner) is an experienced machinery safety consult- ant and cobot safety specialist, who also sits on the BSI robot technical committee. Here, Androsiuk outlines how to navigate the new robot safety landscape and get ahead of the proposed changes, to ensure your applications remain compliant…
nown for their ability to share the same workspace as human employ- ees, collaborative robots (or cobots) are now a mainstay of the industrial robotics sector. Lightweight, simple to programme and flexible enough
to be moved around a factory with ease, un- surprisingly they have proved popular with manu- facturers. The most recent IFR statistics show that cobot installations worldwide grew by 31per cent year-on-year in 2022 to 54,868 units, repre- senting 10per cent of the total robot installations. By their very nature of being collaborative with humans, cobots are also considered a safer option than traditional industrial robots. Until now, cobots have fallen under the technical specification ISO/ TS 15066, which has left some users falling short of meeting their safety obligations. A recent project by the ISO working group has seen the robot safety
standards ISO 10218-1 and ISO 10218-2 up- dated to take account of the technological changes and advancements in collaborative robots. The British Standards Institute (BSI) has recently reviewed the changes to the standards ahead of them being released later this year.
What will this change mean for cobot users and integrators?
ASSESSING RISK
Any changes to the regulatory landscape can seem daunting to a manufacturer. It is not only a finished product that needs to meet required safety standards, but also the components which form part of the ap- plication. Now that the area of cobot safety is being improved to align it with industrial robot safety stan- dards, end users need to be aware of the potential implications. Once the standard is released, it will provide integrators and end users with the information
they require to ensure a safe application. Once the standard is harmonised to the Machinery Directive, it will support the requirements for CE/UKCA marking. Integrators and end users are required to com- plete a detailed risk assessment to identify the risks that both the robot and the application present. Where integrators and end users are not familiar with the risk assessment process, support from independent safety specialists should be sought. It is important that integrators and end users move away from the ‘cobot’ analogy and start to think of cobots as robots for collaborative applications. By generating an audit trail via a fully traceable risk assessment, manufacturers will be able to demonstrate to the HSE that they fully understand the risks involved with cobot integration, have measures in place to control them, and are there- fore compliant with the new standard.
IDENTIFYING POTENTIAL HAZARDS The risk assessment should cover a number of stages in regard to identifying hazards, to enable integrators and end users to achieve their ultimate
18 WINTER 2024 | INDUSTRIAL COMPLIANCE
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