Canadian Occupational Safety

16 Canadian Occupational Safety www.cos-mag.com By Amanda Silliker in key areas and reduced pinch-points. Other are equipped with skin-sensing technology that detects a collision and limits the contact force to the human. If contact is detected, the robot's movements are stopped and its cushioning elements absorb shocks and collisions to prevent a "hard" impact to the worker. Entrapment is also a big concern. For example, the robot could trap the worker between itself and a wall. Fortunately, most of the collaborative robots are light- weight enough that they can easily be pushed away, says Jobin. The parts the robot handles can be dangerous as well. "If you are manipulating soft objects, there's probably no injury that can happen there, but lets say you are manipulating plates, the risk will be com- pletely different," says Jobin. It's important for workers to feel comfortable working day in and day out next to these types of collaborative robots. Comprehensive training is one way to achieve this. "The people need to understand what they can do and what they cannot do and for them to understand it is safe for them to have a robot alongside them, so they don't have fear," says Jobin. "It's not just physical injury but in certain circumstances, if they are afraid of the robot, it's a health problem." Baxter by Rethink Robotics is probably the most famous power and force limiting robot on the market. It is used in the automotive industry in parts manufacturing. It can be adjusted to stand as tall as human colleagues and it weighs about the same. It has a screen with big eyes that allow Baxter to com- municate his "emotions," including concentrating, sleeping and sad. The entire screen lights up orange for the "surprised" expression to indicate Baxter had unexpectedly detected someone in his space. The screen also allows motion, so if Baxter understands a task, he nods his head. ADVANTAGES No matter the type of robot, they all offer many advantages for employees. "There are a lot of dangerous, dirty, unpleasant, uncomfortable jobs that people do in a factory and that's where you don't want people doing that. If we can get people out of those and put a robot in, you have taken people out of harms' way," says McLaughlin. And getting rid of ergonomically unfriendly tasks is a big advantage from a health and safety perspective. "Picture a robot as being motors and gears. They are programed to do an instruction over, over and over. It's an endless procedure of repetition. If you picture a worker doing those tasks, their motors and gears become their joints and their tendons, ligaments, everything takes a beating," says Van Kessel. "By getting a robot to do it, we should defi nitely see an improvement from an ergo- nomic standpoint." When Smith fi rst started at Honda in 1988, they would do spot welding for a lot of the car by hand, so he was happy when robots took that job away. "After you use a welding gun the entire day, your hands are very sore and my fi ngers would be almost locked shut," he says. Businesses like robots because they can work 24-7 without a break and perform the same mundane tasks over and over again; they are quicker and more effi cient than humans; they can withstand exposure to chemicals in the air and physical contact with parts and structures; they are extremely precise and accurate; they have greater physical capacity than humans; and they don't get fatigued. The downside of course from a worker's perspective is the more robots and automation take over, the more low-skilled jobs get eliminated. RISK ASSESSMENT Before implementing any robots in the workplace, a risk assessment needs to be completed. The newest edition of CSA Z434 focuses heavily on this requirement, unlike the previous itineration. "The risk assessment needs to be done always and it must be done with all stages of the product in mind, from the installation to operation to maintenance and also to remove when its life is done," says Jobin. "All those aspects need to be taken into account and those are completely different." According to the standard, a risk assessment shall be carried out on those hazards identifi ed in the hazard identifi cation. This risk assessment shall give particular consideration to: • the intended operations of the robot • unexpected startup • access by personnel from all directions • reasonably foreseeable misuse of the robot • the effect of failure in the control system • the hazards associated with the specifi c robot application. The risk assessment may reveal some applications are just not suitable for robots. For example, a power and force limiting robot working with razor blades may not be a good idea, says Van Kessel. "The robot could be swinging around, I'm distracted by co-workers or by something else that's going on and I'm not paying attention, the robot comes along with the blade and I lose a fi nger or get a severe laceration." Honda is in the process of conducting risk assessments for introducing power and force limiting robots for lightweight applications that would replace poor ergonomic processes, says Smith. It has an internal robot safety committee and it also engages employees in the process. "We always get the voice of the fl oor. We're going to go out to our associates and we are going to ask them, as we introduce these robots, we're going to show them what they are and talk to them about applications they think they would be suitable for," he says. New technologies and capabilities for industrial robots are emerging all around the world. At the University of British Columbia's Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Sys- tems Laboratory, researchers recently completed the design for a robot that can execute unscripted handovers to humans. Funded in part by GM, one application for the robot is help- ing a worker build a car door. If the robot brings the worker a part that is damaged or unsuitable, the worker discards it and the robot automatically fetches a replacement part. And cognitive computing — or arti- fi cial intelligence — is coming down the pipeline, which allows a robot to think more like a human and respond to the environment by itself, without pre-programming. Cognitive comput- ing systems can sense, learn, infer and interact. "Usually the human will teach the machine to do something, but we will need a way for the robot to tell the worker what is good, what is not, what's the status," says Jobin. "Will it be lights, more screens, will it be sound or voice or something else, I don't know, but I think this could help safely introduce more robots." PARTNERS IN PREVENTION 2016 HEALTH & SAFETY CONFERENCE & TRADE SHOW New Frontiers in Health & Safety KEYNOTE SPEAKERS Ziya Tong Co-Host: Daily Planet The Discovery Channel Martin Ford Rise of the Robots: Technology & the Threat of a Jobless Future Dr. James McLurkin Dances with Robots: One Engineer, 112 Little Robots, Toys, Insects & Star Wars Movies April 26 – 2 7, 2016 The International Centre 6900 Airport Road Mississauga • Ontario PartnersinPreventionConference.com

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