Model-Based Identification of Mechanical Hazardsin Human-Robot-Collaboration Applications

Risk assessment is a necessity to estimate requirements for physical safety in industrial human-robot collaboration. The identification of mechanical hazards that are potentially harmful for humans is a crucial step in risk assessment. However, if the identification of hazards is done manually, it strongly depends on human expertise and experience. Thus, it has a significant potential for uncertain findings. In this work we show a formalized approach towards identifying mechanical hazards in collaborative robotic applications. With a model-based description of the robot’s operating environment and the application workflow we propose a formalism that can be applied to various robotic platforms.