Safety Risk Assessment of an Autonomous Agricultural Machine

The safety guidelines outlined in ISO 18497 are not sufficient to guarantee the safe operation of autonomous agricultural machines. Since the risk assessment techniques specified in ISO 12100:2012 require historical failure data of the machine at hand, they cannot be used to effectively mitigate the risk associated with autonomous agricultural machines where such data are not readily available. Analysis from the perspective of ergonomics can potentially increase the safety of autonomous agricultural machines.

The goal of this study was to analyze the safety implications of an autonomous agricultural machine (TerraPreta) using the standards ISO 18497 (ISO, 2018) and ISO 12100:2012 (ISO, 2012), as well as to investigate the ergonomics associated with the use of the autonomous agricultural machine. First, three engineers involved in the robot's manufacturing process were asked to evaluate the robot's functionalities compliance with the applicable safety standards and protective measures outlined in standard ISO 18497 (ISO, 2018). Second, while the robot was planting cover crop seeds, an attempt was made to identify and evaluate every risk connected to the robot using the risk assessment techniques outlined in ISO 12100:2012 (ISO, 2012). (1) Half (50%) of the functionalities of the autonomous agricultural machine complied with the safety requirements and protective measures described within the standard ISO 18497 (ISO, 2018). (2) The heavy reliance on past incident data of the risk assessment procedure described within the standard ISO 12100:2012 (ISO, 2012) makes it ineffective for new and revolutionary technologies such as autonomous agricultural machines where such data are not available. (3) Lifting a bag to fill the robot hopper with seeds was found to be a moderately hazardous activity associated with human-robot interaction. Multiple tentative solutions were provided to avoid this moderately hazardous activity.