Human and robot collaboration facilitates manual labor, counteracts the skilled labor shortage and helps manufacturers secure the future of their businesses. The European Machinery Directive requires a CE marking to deploy robotic systems. Risk assessment is a key component of this. The substantial time and extensive expertise this process requires increases the costs of robot deployment. This constitutes an appreciable obstacle, especially for small and midsize companies automating their operations.

A software assistance system for robot application risk assessment will be developed In the IRPro research project. It will be implemented as a demonstrator and analyzed in a study. The software module will be integrated right into the robot control’s user interface.

The requirements of a digital risk assessment will first be identified in an initial subproject. This is mainly a job for the Fraunhofer IFF research scientists. They will develop a plan for the assistive software workflow and integration.

“Our goal is both to comply with legal requirements and to minimize user effort. To this end, we will be modeling hazard characteristics and conditions,” explains Robert Scharping, project manager at Fraunhofer IFF. “Part of the software is also risk assessment and analysis. We will also be using computer-based assistance systems to limit force and power based on models and to compute safety zones. This data can ultimately be used to compile correct risk assessment documentation,” explains Scharping continuing.

The concept will be implemented in a self-contained software module that can be used independently for digital risk assessment. The software module will subsequently be integrated into a software stack from project partner voraus robotik GmbH. The Hannover company’s software stack is its hardware-agnostic automation software platform voraus.core.

“Building upon our voraus.core software’s hardware-agnostic approach, we intend to implement the software module for digital risk assessment vendor agnostically and integrate it seamlessly into the robot programming environment,” says Dr. Julian Öltjen, Research Director at voraus robotik GmbH. “We will be developing appropriate interfaces for this through which the software module for risk assessment developed at Fraunhofer IFF can directly access each suitable robot simulation model as the real application’s digital twin. What is more, we want to add appropriate functions and environments to the programming environment so that the user is already made aware of potential risks while programming the robot,” Öltjen continues.

When, for instance, a robot is reprogrammed because of a change in the production process, the software will also determine whether and to what extent a new risk assessment has to be performed.

Whereas risk assessment has required substantial expertise until now, easy and intuitive software use is the priority in this project.

“We won’t be able to replace the expert but we hope to expedite and simplify the time-consuming process of risk assessment, which is based on many regulations and standards. We will consequently be making the entry into robotics and automation easier, especially for small and midsize companies,” the project partners agree.

The project is being funded as part of the DATIpilot funding guidelines. These guidelines from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research support research projects focused on transferring knowledge from research to use. The guidelines additionally call for generating new approaches to meeting social challenges and for obtaining important findings that foster innovation and transfer. The project started on September 1, 2024 and will run for eighteen months.