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Robotics and automation

Robotics and automation design machines that sense, decide and act in physical environments. They are used in manufacturing, logistics, inspection and disaster response, and change patterns of operational risk and labour. Advanced Industry and Robotics stewards this page for the Nexus Consortium.

02The method

What robotics and automation covers.

  1. 01

    Core methods

    motion planning; control system design; perception and sensor fusion; human-robot interaction design; simulation-based testing; functional safety analysis.

  2. 02

    Data and instruments

    robot telemetry; industrial control system logs; simulation environments; incident and near-miss records; test track and field trial data.

  3. 03

    Validation

    Systems are validated through simulation, staged field trials and conformance to functional safety standards. Operational monitoring checks performance after deployment.

  4. 04

    Limits

    Robots may behave unpredictably in unstructured environments not covered by testing. Interaction with people raises safety and liability questions.

  5. 05

    Use in risk decisions

    Automation can reduce human exposure to hazardous tasks and speed recovery operations. It also concentrates dependence on software, sensors and supply chains.

03Reference practice

Robotics safety is set by machinery and functional safety standards.

ReferenceWhat it sets
ISO 10218Industrial robot safety
IEC 61508Functional safety
ANSI/UL 4600Safety cases for autonomous products
IFR World RoboticsStatistics on installed robots
04In systemic risk work

Automation changes how failures happen.

Robots and autonomous systems reduce some hazards and introduce others: software faults, sensor misperception, and failures that occur across a fleet simultaneously because every unit runs the same code. Assessment combines functional safety with fleet-level analysis.

  • Consider common-mode failures across fleets.
  • Assess human-robot interaction hazards.
  • Track labour effects alongside safety.
  • Applications on Advanced Industry and Robotics and AI and Autonomous Systems.
06Stewardship

Who maintains this page.

Advanced Industry and Robotics stewards robotics and automation: it keeps this description current and reviews how the method is applied across the platforms.

09Questions

Questions and answers.

Why does one institution host every method page?
GCRI hosts the STEM Commons so that each method has one canonical description. Platforms link to it rather than repeat it, which keeps definitions consistent.
How do I suggest a correction to a method page?
Write to integrity@therisk.global with the passage and the reason.
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