Study

Robots are escaping their cages. As Industry 4.0 accelerates, manufacturers are shifting from fenced automation to collaborative and even humanoid systems—creating a brand-new safety playbook. This Executive Summary distils fresh insights from a two-phase study:

• Results of a quantitative survey of 203 European automation experts

• Findings from 20 in-depth interviews with end users, system integrators, and robot manufacturers

Key findings:

• Collaboration between humans and robots without safety fences remains challenging and requires significant effort to ensure safety

• There is a need for automated and AI-supported options to proactively plan robot applications that are accessible to humans and to achieve them with less effort

• Mobile robots and humanoids that are to be operated without safety fences pose new challenges

• There are also gaps in tools and standards for these new technologies, which delays their safe deployment

Use these findings to benchmark your current practices, prioritize investments, and stay ahead of the next wave of collaborative-robot regulations

Authors:

• Mohamed El-Shamouty
• Mrunal Sompura

Editors:

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Bauernhansl, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Marco Huber, Dr.-Ing. Werner Kraus

Funding

This study was funded by the AI Innovation Center “Learning Systems and Cognitive Robotics.” It is part of a series of studies on the topics of AI and robotics. More information can be found at the following link: https://www.ki-fortschrittszentrum.de/veroeffentlichungen/

Download:

The study is available free of charge here in English.