From Safety Standards to Safe Operation with Mobile Robotic Systems Deployment

TL;DR

This paper reviews safety standards and proposes a risk assessment framework for deploying mobile robots in construction sites, addressing safety challenges like collisions and distractions, validated by field experts.

Contribution

It extends existing safety standards to cover new scenarios in mobile robot deployment and provides a validated risk assessment framework.

Findings

Extended safety standards for mobile robots in construction environments.

Validated risk assessment framework through expert review.

Practical safety recommendations for deployment.

Abstract

Mobile robotic systems are increasingly used in various work environments to support productivity. However, deploying robots in workplaces crowded by human workers and interacting with them results in safety challenges and concerns, namely robot-worker collisions and worker distractions in hazardous environments. Moreover, the literature on risk assessment as well as the standard specific to mobile platforms is rather limited. In this context, this paper first conducts a review of the relevant standards and methodologies and then proposes a risk assessment for the safe deployment of mobile robots on construction sites. The approach extends relevant existing safety standards to encompass uncovered scenarios. Safety recommendations are made based on the framework, after its validation by field experts.