Safety agency to develop standard aimed at cutting robot-related injuries

Addressing the safety implications of having employees working around robots is a top priority for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Center for Occupational Robotics Research.

The agency established the research center in September 2017, and is working on eight research projects and three pilots to aid NIOSH in developing a better understanding of humans and robots in the workplace and making recommendations to develop a standard on how to increase safety, said Diana Castillo, who heads the robotics research center.

NIOSH uses a broad definition of a robot, she said, noting that technologies classified by the agency as robots can include industrial robots in fixed cells, mobile robots, driverless forklifts, powered exoskeletons, drones and even autonomous vehicles.

Although robots are moving into many workplaces, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s 300 logs for reporting workplace injuries still have no specific code to record workplace injuries from robots.

“We’re excited about this technology,” said Ms. Castillo. “We want to proactively be engaged so as the technology deploys, workers are kept safe from the beginning.”

One area where accidents are more likely to occur between workers and robots is during maintenance and calibration, often because a robot was not verified as being completely de-energized, said Dean Bortz, independent consultant with Lancaster Safety Consulting Inc., based in Wexford, Pennsylvania.

“Range of motion is so precise, and hydraulics are unforgiving,” he said. “(A robot is) not going to give you just a little squeeze, it’s going to pin you in there. If there is a temporary energy restoration required, it has to be precise.”