Safety is at the heart of any robotics applications. No matter, which field of robotics: Novel solutions will only be accepted if they do not pose any unreasonable risks – neither to people nor to their environment. Safety is especially important if robots directly interact with humans, operate in publicly accessible areas, or interact with other safety-critical technologies.

Autonomy and the rapid spread of artificial intelligence have opened tremendous possibilities for the use of robotic systems even in very complex scenarios, in many cases in direct interaction with humans. Tackling the safety aspects that come along with these possibilities will require novel approaches and methods of safety engineering and risk management. As safety is an end-to-end property, this comprises the whole life cycle of a robot – from first ideas, concepts, through development, deployment, operation, maintenance, updates and finally decommissioning.

The Topic Group “Safety” is an active community bringing together experts from many domains: Safety, autonomy, artificial intelligence, industrial robotics, collaborative robotics, and many others. As an active part of euRobotics, it contributes to the success of the European robotics community by promoting and addressing safety-related topics to facilitate market success of novel robotics applications and technologies. We organize regular workshops at the annual euRobotics Forum and stimulate the discussion on novel challenges, e.g., with formats like “AI meets Robotics”.

TG Safety promotes “Safety” as one of the fundamental prerequisites for the market success and acceptance of robotics solutions. It serves as an interface both between Science and Industry and between the Safety and the Robotics communities.