Situational-Awareness Safety Monitoring for Modular Factory Risk Alerts
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current safety systems in manufacturing environments, particularly those involving humans, objects, and robots, lack a modular and expandable solution for situational awareness and risk assessment, relying on passive indicators that are ineffective when not visually perceived and specific applications like cut-off switches and proximity sensors that are not universally applicable.
Innovation Solution
A situational-awareness controller that correlates information from various actors in a manufacturing environment using sensors such as RFID, IMU, GPS, and proximity sensors to determine risk levels and generate commands for alert systems or actuators to enhance safety, allowing for modular and reconfigurable sensor placement.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If passive indicators such as cones, flags or signage are used to alert human actors, then the purpose of alerting is achieved when visually perceived, but the system becomes ineffective when an individual does not perceive the passive indicator
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements active monitoring with sensors that detect actors and provide feedback to a safety controller, which then generates alerts or commands to controllable devices. This closed-loop feedback mechanism ensures reliable alerting regardless of human perception, replacing passive indicators with an active detection-and-response system.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables controllable devices to autonomously respond to detected situations by issuing alerts or activating actuators based on sensor data and risk assessment, reducing dependence on human perception and reaction to passive indicators.
2Adaptability or versatility
If cut-off switches and proximity sensors are employed for operator-controlled object actors and automated robot actors, then safety control is achieved for particular applications, but these systems are not modular or expandable
Solution Approach 1:
The safety controller is designed as a universal platform that can monitor and control multiple types of actors (human, object, robot) using various sensor types (RFID, IMU, GPS, proximity sensors). The system provides application-specific safety control through configurable risk criteria while maintaining modular expandability through standardized communication interfaces and sensor integration capabilities.
3Reliability
If a comprehensive safety monitoring system with multiple sensors and historical data correlation is implemented, then situational awareness and safety are enhanced, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system combines multiple sensor types (RFID, IMU, GPS, proximity sensors) and historical data into a single safety controller that correlates information and determines risk levels. This consolidation of monitoring functions into one integrated system enhances safety while managing complexity through unified control architecture.
Solution Approach 2:
The safety controller acts as an intermediary that receives data from various sensors, correlates it with historical information, determines risk levels, and generates appropriate commands. This intermediary layer simplifies the system architecture by centralizing the complex correlation and decision-making processes.
Data Source
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AI summary
Safety System, situational-awareness controllers and methods to increase situational-awareness for an actor associated with a triggering event are described. An example method for monitoring an environment (100), e.g. an automatic manufacturing facility,which includes areas (102,104,106 ... 118) which may be surrounded by barriers (120) or be open unconfined spaces, corridors and actors (122), e.g. humans (122H), objects (122O) and robots (122R), wherein a sensor (124,132,134,140,142) generates a notification of a triggering event; wherein a computing device (200) accesses information that includes information related to an actor (122) associated with the triggering event; wherein the computing device (200) correlates the information to a compilation of historical information by: (i) determining whether the actor's (122) location is associated with one or more safety events stored as part of the compilation of historical information, and (ii) determining a risk level of the actor (122) based on whether the one or more associated safety events occurred within a predetermined range of time from the time associated with the triggering event; and wherein the computing device (200) generates a command based on a result of the correlating and sends the command to at least one controllable device (126,128), e.g. stopping the operation or output a warning.