People were already talking about the threat of robots in 1950. Asimov then published his collection of stories 'I, Robot' containing the three laws for Robots;
- A robot may not inflict injury on a human being, nor cause injury to a human being.
- A robot must carry out orders given by humans, unless those orders violate the first law.
- A robot must protect itself as far as it does not violate the first and second laws.
Well those 'laws' were obviously written in fiction for the robots we know from films, humanoid robots, mostly shaped like humans. Robots that cozy up in all kinds of science fiction films, but meanwhile try to subjugate humanity. In principle, however, those laws continue to make sense in real life and industry.
Also within the world of industrial robots are laws and requirements for the safety of users, which are essentially not much different from Asimov's three rules. To discuss all European directives and laws around industrial robotics here is impractical, but they mostly appear to boil down to mainly Asimov's rule 1 and 2. The end customer will ultimately take care of rule 3, because he obviously does not want any damage to his precious robot at the moment it has to stop for safety.
Accidents
With hundreds of pages of laws and regulations, are accidents involving industrial robots completely preventable? No, they aren't. Last summer, a worker at a Volkswagen factory died because he was crushed flat by an industrial robot. Major newspapers worldwide saw this accident as a springboard to launch a major attack against robots in long articles. They were said to be dangerous and it was wondered aloud whether we should not regulate the world of robotics even more tightly to prevent such accidents. What was missing in many of these articles was the relativisation about how many accidents actually happen with robots and what caused them.
Robotics accidents are so rare that they are often not even categorised separately, but can simply be found under 'industrial accidents'. The accidents that do subsequently happen then also often turn out to be unpreventable with regulations. The accident at VW, for example, seems to have happened when the employee was standing in the robot's working area. Under current regulations, that should already not be possible. However, what does often happen is that safety measures are switched off, possibly temporarily, for maintenance or modifications. No matter how many rules you come up with, if people ignore them during maintenance they will never make sense.
Safety
In addition to strict laws and regulations, the industry itself also ensures safety. Whereas in recent years one saw increasingly larger robot arms or faster, inventive delta robots at trade fairs, this is slowly changing. At the last Pack-Expo, a major packaging industry trade fair in the US, those same robotic arms and inventive delta robots were certainly still present. In addition, however, co-bots, or collaborative robots, were suddenly present. For instance, Baxter, the co-bot from Rethink Robotics was in several places.
What exactly are these co-bots? Simply put, they are robots, mostly with somewhat more human forms, (Baxter, for example, has two arms and a face shown on a tablet) that can work together with human workers without shielding. So they move more slowly and cautiously, but do not have to stop if a human body part comes close.
Add
Are co-bots going to drive out more traditional robots? No, at least, not in the near future. However, they will definitely add to the automation of manufacturing processes. Steps where heavy robotic arms currently palletise your packaging will remain for now, as will the conveyor belts with Delta Robots above them placing your customer's product in your packaging. But that step where a human colleague still has to assess and put back that valuable product may be made easier in the future by a second colleague; the co-bot.
To conclude; will co-bots prevent accidents? No, for now it seems to me we won't. After all, almost all accidents can be traced back to human failure. Possibly already during the programming of the robot, or for instance during maintenance.
If you, along with an experienced robotics consultant, handle robots wisely and follow regulations, you need not fear, for the time being, finding a robot on one of your office chairs on Monday morning.
Peter Paul de Bie - Manager Sales & Technology at Electro ABI B.V.
This article also appeared on Packaging Profs.
