Executive summary 6 Taking safety into account Reacting to the new risk landscape A total of 38 robot-related accidents was reported to the Widespread cobot use will create new risks, change US Occupational Safety and Health Administration existing risks and reduce others. To develop a more (United States Department of Labor, 2019) in the 33 compelling picture of the cobots landscape, the report years between 1984 and 2017. Twenty-seven of those looks at four sectors (industrial environments, agriculture, led to the death of a worker (Nichols, 2017). In healthcare and retail) in which the use of cobots is comparison, the total number of workplace fatalities in currently constrained by concerns about the risks the US in 2013 alone was 4,585 (Bureau of Labor highlighted below. By helping insureds identify the risks Statistics, 2015). In Germany, severe industrial accidents and by offering ways to mitigate them, insurance could (i.e. those resulting in fatality or loss of limbs) are very help increase and speed up cobot adoption. rare, ranging from three to 15 annually between 2005 and 2012 (DGUV, 2015). Murashov et al (2016) pointed Reducing the risks out that there are few reports detailing accidents Robots can make a huge difference to how companies involving industrial robots, and that such incidents are operate. They can prevent people from having to work in rare worldwide. hazardous environments and inaccessible places. They The reliability of robots and cobots depends greatly on increase productivity because they can operate their design application and where they are used. Use of continuously and reduce human errors in warehouses. cobots typically involves multiple parties that include not The use of robotics in surgery has been found to shorten just the organisation where the cobot is installed, but also lengths of hospital stay, decrease complication rates and its installation team, systems integrator, allow surgeons to perform finer tasks. Robotics in consultants/advisors and maintenance team, possibly agriculture could potentially reduce environmental telecommunications and cloud service providers as well impact. Robotic devices executing precision tasks and operating either alone or in clusters can be less as the cobot’s designer and manufacturer. While most damaging than combine harvesters with their significant cobots are not necessarily considered dangerous, given weight and load-bearing footprint. The gains are not their relatively low payload, it is nonetheless important limited to productivity. Lower waste is also a major that firms ensure there is oversight from a health and environmental gain. In manufacturing and logistics, safety human expert and that their cobots operate in robots that work over a 24-hour period can enable fully compliance with international standards for robot safety automated environment with no human presence on-site standards. The design, manufacture and operation of and products to be built in small units that enable robots and cobots fall within the scope of several layers localised manufacture. In agriculture, cobots picking at of ISO Standards and Technical Specifications. night reduces the need to cool the produce. In short, Even though cobots are not necessarily considered cobots play an important role in meeting the objectives of dangerous, one of the challenges for the insurance the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit). industry is that “there are simply not enough cobots in the The report finds: market to get accident statistics” as stated by Interviewee #1 (see page 23). Given the low numbers of robot-related − The widespread adoption of autonomous mobile accidents and the fact that only around 3% of installed robots in retail and agriculture is likely to reduce robots were cobots in 2015, it is not surprising the data on cobot-specific accidents is not yet available. employees’ accidents and failures caused by fatigue. A dedicated risk assessment will be crucial, as are − The use of robots in dangerous environments, additional measures to reduce risk based on real-world such as nuclear decommissioning, mining, space performance data (Platbrood & Görnemann, 2018). and construction, can help improve safety. − For insurers, increasing adoption of robots in dangerous environments would reduce number of employee injury claims by automating processes. Taking control: robots and risk