Systems thinking approach to hazard analysis for complex robots

Abstract

Robots often encounter unforeseen situations. In the past, traditional safety analyses have been used to identify such scenarios. These techniques use reductionist thinking and often miss hazards, especially relating to the environment. Systems thinking on the other hand, employs a holistic perspective that focuses on interactions between system components and between the system and its environment. In this paper, a systems thinking based methodology is developed to identify faults and hazards in a robot system. The method is implemented on a small case study to describe its application.