[:en][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]On January 5th CSA Group published the first edition of particular requirements for rechargeable battery-operated commercial robotic floor treatment machines with traction drives. CSA 22.2 – 336 is a National Standard of Canada.
If you are a robotics engineer working for a company planning to sell floor treatment machines in North America (including sweeping, scrubbing, wet or dry pickup, polishing, application of wax, sealing products, and powder-based detergents or shampooing) then this standard contains important test requirements for you.
It is not.
Occupational Safety and Health Act in the USA and the Canadian Electric Code are legal requirements. All electrically controlled devices or systems in the USA must be approved.
Many of the requirements apply to both manual and robotic machines including such things like electrical safety, battery safety, mechanical strength and construction.
The standard is available from the CSA Group website at or by searching for “336-17” on the CSA Group Store. Please support them and consider licensing a copy of this document. The price is very reasonable at ~100 USD and the CSA do valuable work.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][:zh][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]No! They are not Inherently Safe!
A collaborative robot is intended to work “collaboratively” with a person. i.e. share a common workspace. It is force and speed limited by design to minimize any potential hazard. Collaborative robots fit the application where the task cannot be easily or cost effectively automated. They are easy to deploy, program and repurpose. Collaborative robots are new to everyone including the standards agencies.
A hazard and risk assessment is required that assesses the robot and the environment that it is deployed in. Just as any other robot, things such as collisions, speed, type of end effector and worksite need to be evaluated. Collaborative robots have their own sorts of collisions and hazards. They may not be as severe, but they still exist.
This all comes down to risk and the amount of risk that you are willing to accept! The diagram below shows the high-level steps for doing a Hazard and Risk Assessment. When following the steps, if you assess the risk and find it to be acceptable (your companies acceptable risk norms) then you are done. No need to add any risk reduction.
The next best approach is to determine if protective measures other than a Safety Function can reduce the risk to an acceptable level. If not, then you must assign a SIL and implement a safety function that will provide the required risk reduction.
exida can effectively train your team to perform machine hazard and risk assessments to identify all possible hazards and estimate the risk for each hazard. Specifically, exida coaches you through the process of evaluating the risk, developing and implementing risk reduction options. exida can also educate your team in multiple approaches to SIL target selection. These are just some of the things exida does to ensure you are on the right path![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] [:]