ISR 2016 (June 21 – 22, 2016, Munich, Germany)

Example Application of ISO/TS 15066 to a Collaborative Assembly

Scenario
Björn Matthias, PhD, ABB AG, Corporate Research Center, Ladenburg, Germany
Dr.-Ing. Thomas Reisinger, ABB Automation GmbH, Robotics, Friedberg (Hessen), Germany

Summary / Abstract
For further increased flexibility of high variant manufacturing, deployment of collaborative robots can be an economical
proposition. Of particular present relevance is collaborative small parts assembly in a mixed environment with human
workers and with robots operating according to the protective paradigm of power and force limiting. Safety legislation
requires that one prepare an assessment of the associated risks for every system of machinery deployed in production
facilities and for all relevant use cases it affords. Risk assessment for power-and-force-limited collaborative robots can
be challenging, since experience is scarce and suitable guidance has only recently been published in ISO/TS 15066. This
paper discusses how possible incidental contact events between the collaborative robot and human worker occurring in
the course of the power-and-force-limited application are to be scrutinized for compatibility with tolerance limits for
biomechanical loading.

1 Introduction four basic types of collaborative operation in section 3.

Sections 4 and 5 outline the risk assessment procedure and
Recent years have brought a marked increase in the need discuss the details of this procedure as applied to an exam-
for further flexibility of manufacturing systems. This trend ple PFL application. Finally, section 6 summarizes the pa-
is fueled by market demands for larger product selections, per and provides an outlook to further developments.
driving up variants and driving down lot sizes. Factory au-
tomation technology has reacted with the introduction of
concepts such as agility, lean automation, variable automa- 2 International Standards
tion, and the scalable degree of automation. The deploy- When considering the proper implementation of collabora-
ment of human-robot collaboration (HRC) in flexible man- tive applications, it is helpful to have an overview of the
ufacturing is an important tool for realizing these concepts relevant standards. The hierarchy of standards of safety of
[1]. machinery is shown below in Figure 1.
Since HRC brings workers and robots into a shared work-
space, conventional protective schemes established for in-
dustrial robotics no longer apply. Four basic types of col-
laborative operation of suitable industrial robots are de-
fined in the standards for robot safety, ISO 10218-1 [2],
and robot system safety, ISO 10218-2 [3].
More details are set forth in the recently published tech-
nical specification on collaborative robots, ISO/TS 15066
[4]. This document has been eagerly awaited by the end-
user community seeking to deploy collaborative applica-
tions operating according to the “power and force limiting”
(PFL) type of collaborative operation.
Since this type of collaboration involves the possibility of
incidental contact between worker and robot in the shared Figure 1 Overview of standards relevant to human-robot col-
workspace, particular care is required in the mechanical laboration
and control design of the robot and the overall application.
Following harmonized standards serves the ultimate pur-
The document ISO/TS 15066 [4] provides guidelines for
pose of utilizing the associated presumption of conformity
the design of PFL applications so as to render the physical
with the European Machinery Directive. Since there is a
contact situations harmless.
product-level (type C) standard for the safety of industrial
This contribution offers a step-by-step walk-through of the
robots in ISO 10218-1 [2], one can as a rule turn to this
risk assessment procedure for a model PFL application.
document for guidance in the design of the safety features
Section 2 gives a short overview of the relevant laws and
for industrial robots and to ISO 10218-2 [3] for the safety
international standards, followed by descriptions of the
features of robot systems.

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 ISR 2016 (June 21 – 22, 2016, Munich, Germany)

Collaborative robots and collaborative applications, how- contact are a new step for which little experience exists.
ever, have new properties for which there is insufficient The procedure for using the guidance of ISO/TS 15066 [4]
guidance in the parts of ISO 10218 [2], [3]. To fill this gap, is shown in Figure 2 below.
the necessary additional information for designing safe col-
laborative applications has been compiled and included in
ISO/TS 15066 [4].
Since HRC applications can bring the human operator and
the collaborative robot quite close to one another, a proper
risk assessment conducted according to ISO 12100 [5] is
of utmost importance.

3 Types of Collaborative Operation

The robot safety standards [2], [3] have formally intro-
duced HRC as a new type of robot application with special Figure 2 Risk assessment process of ISO 12100 applied to col-
requirements on the robot and on the system integration. laborative applications of PFL-type
The four basic types of HRC are summarized in Table 1
below. As shown, the risk for each use case is to be estimated and
mitigated. Here it is important to note that the preferred
Type of Main means mitigation step of eliminating the risk by a design change
collaborative operation of risk reduction is applicable to the system integration step, but usually not
to the robot itself, since it is typically a commercial prod-
Safety-rated monitored uct. Robots suitable for PFL collaborative operation will,
Supervised standstill of
stop (SRMS) however, often offer a toolbox of safety functions that can
robot when operator is in
(Example: manual load- be configured to reduce the risks associated with the phys-
collaborative work space
ing-station) ical contact situations.
As a first step, all relevant use cases involving the risk of
Hand guiding (HG) Robot motion only physical contact between the operator and the robot must
(Example: operation as through direct guiding in- be described and analyzed. These possible situations must
lift assist device) put of operator be associated with the “quasi-static” (sustained) or “transi-
ent” (short-duration) type of contact. The former could be,
Speed and separation Robot motion only when for example, a crushing configuration with the operator’s
monitoring (SSM) separation distance above hand caught between robot arm and work bench. The latter
(Example: replenishing protective separation dis- could be an unconstrained collision of the moving robot
parts containers) tance arm with the lower arm of the human operator.
Power and force limiting Next, each of these situations must be assessed concerning
In contact events, robot the physical characteristics of the quasi-static and/or tran-
by inherent design or
can only exert harmless sient contact situations. This can be done by direct meas-
control (PFL)
levels of static and dy- urement with suitable equipment or by a validated compu-
(Example: collaborative
namics forces tational procedure or simulation program.
assembly)
Table 1 Overview of the four basic types of HRC operation
For comparison to these values, ISO/TS 15066 [4] Annex
A contains tables of limit values for biomechanical loading
While the risk assessment for the first three types of col- of 29 different regions of the human body. The limit values
laborative operation aims to prevent any physical contact for quasi-static contact are given in terms of maximum
between the human operator and the moving robot – as for force and of maximum pressure that can be regarded as
conventional industrial robot installations – the objective safe. For the transient case, peak force and peak pressure
of the risk assessment for PFL operation cannot be to pre- values can be a factor of two higher.
vent contact. This case is more complex, since one must If the application at hand violates the limit values, the phys-
understand the consequences of incidental contact rather ical contact severity must be reduced by putting in place
than simply avoiding them. additional protective measures. While these measures can
include rounding off contact surfaces and/or covering them
with passive padding, it is important to use the available
4 Risk Assessment safety functions of the robot controller appropriately.
While the risk assessment process for a PFL type collabo- Limiting the joint torques appropriately can ensure that
rative application must be carried out according to ISO forces and pressures in quasi-static crushing configurations
12100 [5] as for any standard robot application, the step of are kept below the relevant bounds. Speed limits on the
evaluating the risks associated with the possible physical

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 ISR 2016 (June 21 – 22, 2016, Munich, Germany)

motion of parts of the robot manipulator can serve to miti- Use case Description, Frequency
gate the effects of transient impact by limiting the transfer
of kinetic energy to the contacted body region. UC1: Setup and x Specially trained personnel
programming x Rare
5 Example Application UC2: Normal x Simply trained personnel
production x Frequent
To illustrate this procedure for an example application, we
consider a model layout of a collaborative work cell with a UC3: Manual in- x Simply trained personnel
dual-arm robot operating either side-by-side or face-to- tervention x Infrequent
face with a human operator.
UC4: Foreseea- x Untrained personnel
ble misuse x Rare
5.1 Layout
We consider in our example an arrangement with one col- UC5: Mainte- x Specially trained personnel
laborative robot with two arm, such as the ABB YuMi, op- nance x Infrequent
erating according to power and force limiting in the pres-
ence of up to two operators. The shared assembly task is UC6: Cleaning x Untrained personnel
conducted with all three participants located at a common x Infrequent
work bench, as shown below in Figure 3. UC7: Disman- x Untrained personnel
tling x Rare
Table 2 Overview of use cases for example application

5.3 Contact Situations

Based on the diagram in Figure 3, we can represent the pos-
sible contact situations diagrammatically as shown in Fig-
ure 4.

Figure 3 Typical layouts of work cells for collaborative assem-

bly with robots operating according to PFL

While the intended types of use of this system will not in-
clude regular physical contact between human and robot,
slight aberrations in these can be the cause of incidental
contact.
5.2 Use Cases
For a systematic approach, we begin by listing the antici-
pated use cases for the system shown. The information to
record includes the task to execute, the lifetime phase of
the machinery in which it takes place, the qualification
level of the personnel involved, and the frequency of oc-
currence of the particular use case (see Table 2).
A review of these reveals that for use cases UC1 – UC5
there are both the hazard of quasi-static and of transient
contact with the hand or lower arm of the operator. Use
cases UC6 and UC7, however, take place with the robot
system powered down, so that no risk of contact with the
moving robot exists.
Figure 4 Illustration of possible contact situations
The characteristics of these contact situations are listed in
Table 3. It is for each of these contact situations that meas-
urements on the actual application or proper computations
are necessary to establish the actual effects on the exposed
human body region.
Note that we are excluding potential contacts to other body
regions, such as the head, in this discussion. Such other
contact cases must be mitigated by separate and additional
measures, which are not discussed in this paper.
In this paper, we are using simplified kinematics and mass
distribution of a YuMi robot to estimate the quasi-static
and the transient loading of the lower arm and of the hand
of the operator. The model of the transient contact used

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 ISR 2016 (June 21 – 22, 2016, Munich, Germany)

follows the effective two-body collision model described the necessary safety functions at the required safety perfor-
in Annex A of ISO/TS 15066 [4]. mance level.
For the model application, the most important safety func-
Contact Parameters tion is the speed limit. Following the guidance in ISO
Case x effective mass, contact area, region 13849-1 [6], Annex A, we can determine the required
x contact type, contact force or speed safety performance level for this function. The analysis is
CON1 x 3.9 kg, 2 cm2 , lower arm presented in Table 5.
x Quasi-static, 59 N
CON2 x 3.9 kg, 2 cm2 , lower arm Use Unpro- Severity Expo- Avoid-
x Transient, 790 mm/s case tected of haz- sure to ance of
CON3 x 2.5 kg, 1 cm2 , hand risk ard (S) hazard hazard
x Quasi-static, 21 N (F) (P)
CON4 x 2.5 kg, 1 cm2 , hand
UC1, Too S1 Æ High P2 Æ
x Transient, 1500 mm/s
UC5 high S0 F2 P1
Table 3 Overview of characteristics of contact situations
UC2 Too S1 Æ F2 Æ Difficult
Carrying out the estimates leads to the following results for high S0 F1 P2
the contact situations in use cases UC1 – UC5.
UC3 Too S1 Æ High P2 Æ
Con- Limit Values Calculated Effects high S0 F2 P1
tact x Force
Case x Pressure UC4 Too S1 Æ F2 Æ Difficult
x Energy Den- high S0 F1 P2
sity
UC6, Ac- None n.a. n.a.
CON1 x 160 N x 59 N UC7 ceptable
x 180 N/cm2 x 29.5 N/cm2
CON2 x 1.3 J/cm2 x 0.13 J/cm2 Table 5 Overview of required safety performance of speed lim-
CON3 x 140 N x 21 N iting function
x 190 N/cm2 x 21 N/cm2
CON4 x 0.49 J/cm2 x 0.80 J/cm2 Note that we assume the application as such, i.e. tooling
Table 4 Overview of calculated effects of contact situations and work pieces, do not include sharp geometrical surfaces
that would increase the severity of potential contact events
We note that for CON4, we exceed the allowed limit for to “S2” in the sense of ISO 13849-1. Also, the symbol
energy transfer density. “S0” is used to indicate “no injury”.
The reduction of S1 Æ S0 is achieved by a safety-related
5.4 Risks and Risk Reduction speed limit to ensure that the effects of transient contact are
mitigated sufficiently. The capability of personnel to avoid
For quasi-static contact events, the risk reduction measures
a potential contact hazard can be improved from P2 Æ P1
can be limiting the torques in the robots joints and the re-
by training, where appropriate due to frequent exposure to
sulting force exerted by the manipulator. In our example
the machinery.
we find that no additional reduction of the forces and pres-
The safety performance of the speed limit is given by trac-
sures in the quasi-static contact situations is necessary.
ing through the tree in Fig. A.1 of ISO 13849-1. We find
Transient events can best be managed by reducing the ro-
that:
bot speed appropriately. As determined above, the transi-
x S1 / F2 / P1 Æ PL b for UC1, UC3, UC5
ent contact to the hand in situation CON4 exceeds the limit
x S1 / F2 / P2 Æ PL c for UC2, UC4
for this body region and requires risk reduction. It is found
Since we know that the occurrence of a speed fault in the
that a speed reduction of the robot TCP from 1500 mm/s to
servo control of the robot controller is very unlikely, we
1150 mm/s in this use case will bring the energy deposition
can lower the safety performance level of the safety func-
density from 0.80 J/cm2 down to 0.47 J/cm2, which satisfies
tion by one level to PL b, in accord with ISO 13849-1,
the limit value of 0.49 J/cm2 for transient contacts to the
clause A.2.3.
hand.
As a result of this assessment, we conclude that the speed
limiting safety function must have a performance level of
5.5 Safety Function PL b.
Following ISO 13849-1:2015 [6], the consideration of the For this example application, then, we have gone through
severity of the original hazard and the characteristics of the the contact risks and have determined the correct mitiga-
relevant use cases are relevant to determine the necessary tion steps to achieve a safe PFL collaborative application.
safety performance of the safety functions used. For a ro-
bot to be suitable for the application intended, it must offer

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 ISR 2016 (June 21 – 22, 2016, Munich, Germany)

6 Summary and Outlook

The introduction of the ISO Technical Specification
ISO/TS 15066 [4] meets demands on guidance for the
proper design and dimensioning of collaborative robot ap-
plications. The practical deployment of PFL-type applica-
tion is now set on more solid ground through the availabil-
ity of tables with limit values on biomechanical loading of
human body regions.
The risk assessment task for PFL applications is more com-
plex than that for standard robot application, since now ei-
ther measurements or validated computations of incidental
physical contact between robot and human must be pre-
pared. We have outlined a comprehensive approach to
identifying and characterizing the contact situations, esti-
mating their severity and comparing these to established
biomechanical limits.
The risk assessment process according to ISO 12100 [5] is
thus still applicable for collaborative robot applications.
Specific guidance for the estimation of risks associated
with physical contact between robots and humans in PFL
operation is given in ISO/TS 15066 [4]. The step of esti-
mating the prospective physical properties of the contact
situations is somewhat more demanding than the typical
risk assessment for standard industrial robot applications
and the community must now build up experience in this
area.
It is foreseen that procedures similar to that outlined will
be included into specialized risk assessment tools for col-
laborative robot applications. Simulations of incidental
contacts with proper consideration of the physics of the vis-
coelastic contact itself will streamline future risk assess-
ments. When such simulations are validated against exper-
imental data, it is anticipated that they can be used for val-
idation of a PFL collaborative robot application.

7 References
[1] J. Krüger, T. K. Lien, and A. Verl, “Cooperation of
human and machines in assembly lines,” In: CIRP An-
nals of Manufacturing Technology. 58 (2009), No. 2,
p. 628-646.
[2] ISO 10218-1:2011, “Robots and robotic devices –
Safety requirements for industrial robots – Part 1: Ro-
bots”, ISO, Geneva (2011).
[3] ISO 10218-2:2011, “Robots and robotic devices –
Safety requirements for industrial robots – Part 2: Ro-
bot systems and integration”, ISO, Geneva (2011).
[4] ISO/TS 15066:2016, “Robots and robotic devices –
Collaborative robots”, ISO, Geneva (2016).
[5] ISO 12100:2010, “Safety of machinery – General
principles for design – Risk assessment and risk reduc-
tion”, ISO, Geneva (2010).
[6] ISO 13849-1:2015, “Safety of machinery – Safety-re-
lated parts of control systems – Part 1: General princi-
ples for design”, ISO, Geneva (2015).

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