Teaming with industrial cobots: A socio-technical perspective on safety analysis

Collaborative human–machine interaction will be progressively intensified in industrial applications. The aim of this article is to examine current approaches to cobot safety by showing that these approaches can additionally benefit from systems thinking methods. The first part of this article covers a narrative literature review on predominantly techno-centric robot safety approaches, with a strong focus on containing kinetic energy and ensuring separation with humans. The second part introduces systems thinking methods to analyze a socio-technical perspective on cobot safety, including joint cognitive systems and distributed cognition perspectives. This explorative research dimension is expected to overcome an overly narrow interpretation of safety issues, anticipating the challenges ahead in ever more complex cobot applications. This article embraces a socio-technical perspective to explore the potential of Joint Cognitive Systems to manage risk and safety in cobot applications. Three systemic safety analysis approaches are presented and tested with a demonstrator case study concerning their feasibility for cobot applications: System-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP); Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM); and Event Analysis of Systemic Teamwork (EAST). These methods each provide interesting extensions to complement the traditional understanding of risk as required by current and future industrial cobot implementations. The power of systemic methods for safer and more efficient cobot operations lies in revealing the distributed and emergent result from joint actions and overcoming the reductionist view from individual failures or single agent responsibilities. The safe operation of cobot applications can only be achieved through alignment of design, training, and operation of such applications.