Applying the STAMP system safety engineering methodology to the design of a domestic robot

摘要

Domestic robots are far beyond technical apparatuses; they include management of processes and structures that involve organisational and cultural aspects. These robots could be viewed as socio-technical systems since they are operating in the house and the most domestic scenarios depend on close human-robot interaction. Taking into account the fact that particular safety standards for domestic robots are not available, in this paper, we propose a new approach to a safety standard developed using a novel methodology. This methodology can be applied to other standardisation activities and is based on powerful hazard analysis technique developed by MIT. It goes far beyond covering only component failure, human error and software issues, by including safety design constraints, management of the system, cooperation among manufacturer, user and government, paradigms from industrial robots safety, accident/incident investigation. All the aforementioned non-technical aspects of the system could not be ignored. Identifying all the involved parameters, technical or not, this paper proposes a new approach to a safety standard for domestic robots, filling a gap not only in the standards domain but most importantly in the approach.