Title
Emergent risk to workplace safety as a result of the use of robots in the work place
Author
Steijn, W.
Luiijf, E.
van der Beek, D.
Publication year
2016
Abstract
For decades now, robots have been a key part of future visions in films and books. As long ago as 1920, Karel Čapek wrote a play called RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots). The first real robot, ‘Gargantuan’, was constructed between 1935 and 1937. It was made completely out of Meccano. Today’s industrial robots strongly resemble those introduced on General Motors’ car production lines in 19612. In the past fifty years, robots have become much faster and more accurate, but in many cases they do no more than operate in one particular location or on rails, automatically carrying out perhaps only a single task within a fixed hazardous zone or inside a safety cage. The box on the next page shows several examples of the application of modern-day industrial robots in different sectors. These robots are still a far cry from the intelligent and autonomous robots described in science-fiction films and books. It is because of these depictions that many people imagine robots as being like humans - able to move independently, to interact with people, and to respond to their surroundings.
Subject
ELSS - Earth, Life and Social Sciences
Urban Mobility & Environment
Healthy Living
Work and Employment
Risks
Workplace
Robots
Innovation
Safety
SUMS - Sustainable Urban Mobility and Safety
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http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:94d6e198-4249-40b8-80c0-2d73f7b2e92a
TNO identifier
573976
Report number
TNO 2016 R11488
Publisher
TNO, Utrecht
Document type
report