Essential Health & Safety Requirements For Industrial Machines Equipped With Machine Learning

Abstract

The Machine Directive, which contains the Health and Safety Requirements to warrant safe design of industrial (and commercial) machines, is currently being evaluated for amendment. These amendments should ensure that the Machine Directive is relevant for all machines that could be introduced on the work floor in the following 30 years. 

In this paper, we specifically focus on what additional requirements could be included in the Machine Directive to prepare it for introduction to the work floor of machines with Machine Learning. 

The requirements for the Machine Directive in its current form are insufficient to warrant the safe design of machines that have become learning entities. Based on a desk study and interviews and workgroups with experts in robotics, nine potential supplementary Essential Health & Safety Requirements (in short EHSR) were defined. 

Although it will be a difficult task to prepare the Machine Directive for the coming 30 years, we believe that with the proposed supplementary EHSR, the 'safe design' of many future machine learning applications would be ensured.