LIAISON Project Seeks Feedback on Exoskeleton and Rehabilitation Robotics Standards

The LIAISON Project, part of the COVR Project, is seeking your input on previously published safety standards on exoskeletons, personal robotics, rehabilitation robotics, and agricultural machinery. More specifically, see the standard name and link to the introduction page of each survey below:

• ISO13482:2014 on personal care robots: https://lnkd.in/dWWaiEZ
• IEC80601-2-78:2019 on rehabilitation robotics: https://lnkd.in/dhGCEZm
• ISO18497:2018 on agriculturalmachinery: https://lnkd.in/d33b7mT

The surveys are relatively short, with about nine main question families each. The questions are intended for individuals and organizations that have used the above-mentioned standards and exoskeleton developers familiar with the material. The aim is to improve robot safety standards and legal frameworks by providing policy and standard makers with relevant knowledge about legal inconsistencies, new categories, or new safety requirements. The surveys are intended to help policy and standard makers update existing safety frameworks.

The Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands, runs the surveys as part of LIAISON. LIAISON is a project that aims to “link robot development and policymaking to reduce the complexity in robot legal compliance in the context of COVR.” It is set to run between 2020 and 2021 with funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Grant Agreement No 779966. COVR stands for “being safe around collaborative and versatile robots in shared spaces.” Their mission statement is “to significantly reduce the complexity in safety certifying cobots.” “LIAISON aligns with the overall H2020 COVR goal to reduce complexity in safety certifying robots by providing policymakers with the necessary knowledge about legal inconsistencies, new categories, or new safety requirements (including psychological) to update existing frameworks.”

COVR and LIAISON culminate into the COVR Toolkit (link: https://www.safearoundrobots.com/home), which is meant to be a one-stop-shop for the safety of collaborative robots. COVR has awarded at least two exoskeleton developers in the past, but as the name suggests, the toolkit is heavily slated towards general cobots.

Additional links:

Short description of LIAISON: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/research/research-projects/law/liaison