Op-ed: Robotics are great, but let’s bring safety to the forefront

October 4, 2024

RoboSafety’s Mary Yazdani says Ottawa is a national hotspot for smart mobility technologies, including robots, drones, autonomous vehicles and the support technologies that power them, but asks, what about safety?

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Every year around the world there are thousands of safety recalls for everything from cars to food, consumer goods to airplane parts. Why so many? Manufacturers will tell you that things are more complex, so there are more things that can go wrong. Agreed, but shouldn’t that complexity dictate more investment in safety processes and safety engineers? I believe the larger reason is a corporate mindset that safety is not a priority. But I would argue that a culture of safety can actually improve the bottom line. Consider auto recalls. One of the Big Three automakers recently had to spend more than a billion dollars to fix a single recall. A European automaker faced a recall that forced the company to scale back its outlook. Or how about autonomous cars that collide with other vehicles and pedestrians? This is a clear safety issue that must be solved to gain full user confidence. The recent GCXpo tech show in Ottawa was a huge showcase of the latest devices in “smart mobility.” Ottawa is a national hotspot for smart mobility technologies, including robots, drones, autonomous vehicles and the support technologies that power them. But what about safety? It’s not always the first subject discussed. Yet these machines are out in the world, with limited human control. There is a real risk that failures could cause human injury, death or property destruction. We often assume safety has been addressed, but standards aren’t always keeping up with the pace of technology. In some cases, there are no standards at all. Canada’s safety regulations often come up short when compared to Europe and the U.S., leading some business executives to have a very concerning mindset that safety is expensive, so they’ll only invest in safety when it’s mandatory. Many companies purchase parts from suppliers assuming they are safe. Others sell their devices and expect buyers to ensure that safety standards are met.

Safety is often secretive

At RoboSafety, we’ve noticed that safety is a secretive issue. Companies don’t like to talk about what they do or don’t do regarding safety. While there are plenty of techniques to reduce risk, companies are often hesitant to share details. RoboSafety was the only company at GCXpo focused solely on improving safety processes. We don’t build machines or circuit boards — we design new software tools to help safety engineers conduct better safety analyses. Better analysis identifies weak spots and risks that can be corrected, leading to safer products. We know better safety is possible. We know that it has to be a priority from the start of a project and not something that all too often comes late in the design process, making it costly to implement significant changes. Some safety tools on the market are 20-30 years old, while many others haven’t been updated in at least five years. That’s not exactly keeping pace with the growing complexity of devices.

Education and safety

You might expect that, given the importance of safety, engineering schools would emphasize safety engineering. Yet, in Canada, there is only one university that offers a graduate degree or master’s of applied science in safety and risk engineering: Memorial University in Newfoundland. Most engineers learn some safety techniques in school but are assigned to safety engineering roles once they enter the workplace, learning on the job. At GCXpo, we spoke with several educators who agree that it is time to offer more safety courses and workshops at engineering schools.

Smart support for safety

There’s no doubt that innovation is driving advancements in robots, unmanned vehicles, drones and in many other industrial sectors. We hope there will be a surge of support for safety alongside this growth. At the very least, people need to adopt a culture of safety, making it a priority from day one on any project. Mary Yazdani is CEO of Ottawa’s RoboSafety and a Forty Under 40 recipient.