Systems Considerations on Robot End Effector Speed as a Risk Factor during Robot Maintenance.

Details

• Personal Author:
  Etherton J
• Description:
  A systems approach to human control of moving industrial robots during maintenance tasks was discussed with emphasis on robot speed. There is significant potential for serious injury while working with robots; reports of 33 industrial robot related injuries or incidents in the United States have been collected by the Safety Standards Subcommittee of the Robotic Industries Association. An objective of the systems approach was to minimize the risk that overrun distance after an unexpected slow robot move begins is not large enough to crush a programmer against a fixed object. To effectively decrease the risk, the speed of the robot and effector, along with subsystem interactions, needed to be assessed. Standards for slow speed were detailed; 25 centimeters per second was suggested as a speed whereby humans could recognize and react to perceived hazard. In the systems model, robot stopping time was a function of human perception time, human decision time, human movement time, robot controller time and braking time. The human information processing subsystem took into account time of reaction and probability that a certain reaction would take place. Means of improving human reliability in regard to effective detection and response to hazardous robot motion were needed. The author suggests that future improvements might come in warning devices and/or programmer training. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Accident Prevention Accidents Manufacturing And Industrial Facilities Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Industrial-equipment; Equipment-design; Equipment-operators; Industrial-safety; Safety-engineering; Equipment-reliability; Machine-operation; Analytical-models; Accident-prevention
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  Louisiana ; OSHA Region 6
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  434-437
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:00178166
• Citation:
  Eighth International System Safety Conference, New Orleans, Louisiana, July 27-31, 1987 :434-437
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Eighth International System Safety Conference, New Orleans, Louisiana, July 27-31, 1987
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:7dc847c09aedf140bc731323e8446b4703641ae07d6ad9e7b7238120dab30b8f7dcaa9b938d34d035f87873a0fe7fec262d5d13dcaf290925445e82b6de3b57d
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/242473/cdc_242473_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 168.02 KB ]