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There are many standards worldwide dealing with safety issues in robots and adequate protections for their industrial use. Two main safeguard actions are considered to avoid mechanical risks, namely physical or non-physical protections and design guidelines for robots and their components. Nevertheless, there is a lack of specific standards for service robots. Safety in these robots needs a new point of view. It requires a strategy to be changed from pre-contact to post-contact safety, since it is not possible to avoid human–robot interaction. On the other hand, in automotive industry crash test results are used for assessing car safety by means of safety indices. In this paper, quantitative head injury indices for automobiles are analysed and a new safety index for robots NIR is derived. The similitude between NIR and indices used in automotive industry lets the new index to take advantage of previous results and knowledge available in automotive field. Results with NIR are compared with those given by e...

The aim of this investigation was to setup the procedure to measure the efficiency of market control activities in the European framework. This was carried out by means of analysing the data collected in the last five campaigns of control of industrial products (Cordero and Munoz Sanz, 2009), performed yearly by the Safety Machinery Lab (Spain). The reliability of the control process or a certain product regarding safety is thus characterised by means of a mathematical model. The goal of each campaign is to verify whether a particular product falls within the scope of the Machinery Directive (Directive 2006/42/EC; Real Decreto 1644/2008) (on forwards MD).2Directive 2006/42/EC, that came into force on 29 June 2006. Spain transposed Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC (onwards MD) to national regulation as Real Decreto 1644/2008. 2 This implies to verify compliance with essential health and safety requirements related to the design and construction of machinery and, to test machine according to related Harmonised Standards. A methodology of experimental design was applied. Sample context (representative population, experimental design, selection criteria) and final sample were defined from data collected during 2002-2006 campaigns. In a first phase, data were analysed to evaluate their quality, to arrange them in a proper way and to make a trend analysis. Repeated behaviours in the same population (analysis of signpost) were also checked and relations among different product types were setup. Once the preliminary conclusions were got from this qualitative study, a second phase, quantitative, based on the mathematical post-processing of testing results was developed. It lays down the base that supports the mathematical model. This second phase, which represents the behaviour of the activities of market control, is the matter of discussion of present paper.

This article aims to highlight the current status of compliance to Machinery Directive 98/37/EC (transposed to Spanish regulation as RD 56/1995, of 20th January) (a new directive numbered as 2006/42/EC [Directive 2006/42/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 may 2006 on machinery, and amending Directive 95/16/EC (recast). OJ L157/24-86, 9.6.2006.], that recasts and replaced 98/37/ED directive and its amendments, came into force on 29 June 2006; it will not be applied until 29th December 2009. European Member States have a lead-time of two years to adopt and publish the national laws and regulations transposing the provisions of the new Directive into national law. Latest 10th October, Spain transposed Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC to national regulation as Real Decreto 1644/2008 [Real Decreto 1644/2008, de 10 de octubre, por el que se establecen las normas para la comercializacion y puesta en servicio de las maquinas. BOE 246/2008, de 11 octubre 2008. Paginas 40995–41030]) of a particular family of machinery (hand-held, medium and small-size, deeply introduced in the market, of low-medium cost), that any user, professional or non-professional, can acquire as first-hand in any of the sales points (whether or not experts in these kind of products). At the same time, it emphasises the most significant shortcomings and non-conformities found, after analyzing the results of five consecutive Campaigns of Control of Industrial Products performed by one of the labs (placed in Spain) involved in the market surveillance European Program.

Current brief aims to introduce the concept of safety in European industrial sectors, particularly in mechanics and machinery industry. It also highlights the importance to ensure an even level of machinery safety along the European Union, setting up the appropriate frame and procedures to keep it under control. An overview over market surveillance activities for machinery (regulations, main actors and their roles) first at Community level, and secondly an approach to one of the Member States is also introduced.

This paper describes an experimental procedure consisting of impact tests that simulate a collision of a human head with an industrial robot with the aim to validate a safety index named as New Index for Robots (NIR) and its outputs. The experiments in this paper are based on lab tests. It is an attempt to characterize the NIR index underlying the main parameters that are involved in crash interaction and to highlight limitations and weakness of suggested impact tests.