What’s the right approach — and the wrong one — to robot safety in the warehouse? 

You could say that robots are taking over the warehouse — except that human workers in that space aren’t going away anytime soon. So the issue of safety becomes paramount. We’re no longer in the first generation of robots that had to be segregated and caged to avoid potentially fatal collisions with people. Now robots are zipping up and down warehouse aisles. So how can the safety of human workers be assured? On this episode, we learn of the work of the R15.08 industry committee, formed by the American National Standards Institute and Robotic Industries Association (now the Association for Advancing Automation, or A3). They’re in the midst of drafting a three-part document setting forth best safety practices for, respectively, industrial mobile robot manufacturers, integrators and users, in environments shared by people and machines. Our guest is Michael Bearman, chief administrative officer of Vecna Robotics. He also tells us what many warehouses get wrong about robot safety. Hosted by Bob Bowman, Editor-in-Chief of SupplyChainBrain.