Finland is ranked rather high in international robot density statistics. In Finland, robots are typically used in applications where they operate in close proximity to humans. The research described in this paper, sourced from Finnish databases, identified 25 severe accidents which can be attributed to robots. The current accident data can provide an insight into the type of accidents associated with future human-robot interaction (HRI) applications. Accident statistics indicate that most of the severe robot-related accidents involved crushing a person against a rigid object. As crushing hazards currently dominate accident statistics, and with HRI applications becoming increasingly common, humans are expected to be exposed to more crushing hazards in the future. The close proximity of the robots means that there is very little time to escape from crushing hazard. The prevention of collisions between robots and humans is paramount to reducing the amount of accidents. Actions to diminish the T. Malm ( ) · J. Viitaniemi · S. Lind · O. Venho-Ahonen · J. Schabel VTT, effects of any subsequent collision are also important. The control after a collision, however, needs to be very quick in order to minimise the damage caused by an impact. Current practice demands that upon detection of a collision, active movements are typically not allowed without a human supervision. Moving a robot away to a safe position and releasing any pressure against a person may save lives, but would entail some adjustments or new interpretations of the current safety requirements.

The objective of this research project was to improve manual work tasks and workplace design with a new digital human model based design method. The idea of the method was to make the design and analyze of work and workplaces easy for floor level development case. It also should to be exploitable in the context of participatory design approach. The developed method was implemented on a production design simulation platform. It was designed to be used in design of human factors, performance and functionality of a production concurrently. The implemented tool includes basic human motions which exploit real human motion data, effective work design features to easily generate variational solutions, embedded ergonomic analyses and checklists to help analyzing different work environment solutions, and to document the design outcome. Four industrial case studies were completed with the tool. The results show that the tool is feasible for individual and group design work, and has positive impacts on the design process and on the way how individuals can influence on her or his future work in production system.

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