Release from
The AIT and its partners are strengthening the safety of autonomous machines through technological innovations, legal requirements and ethical standards.
Today, heavy machinery is indispensable in many sectors, such as logistics, construction or municipal tasks like waste collection and recycling. In order to make their operation safer and more convenient, they are to be increasingly equipped with assistance systems and autonomous functions in the future. In the GUARDIAN project, the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and its partners are investigating how automated machines can be used safely and reliably in public spaces and what standards are required for safety and reliability.
Safe operation of autonomous machines: Challenges in public spaces
In closed, structured environments such as warehouses or assembly halls, legal requirements, clear room layouts with barriers and monitoring sensors as well as trained personnel enable the safe operation of autonomous machines.
In public spaces, however, where fixed structures and the aforementioned safety measures are lacking and autonomous machines have to react to unpredictable situations, challenges arise that have hardly been solved to date. Especially in open terrain with changing weather conditions, reliable functionality is currently not guaranteed for a variety of reasons. Additional complexity arises when people and objects are in the machine's safety zone and are involved in the work process in close proximity. Furthermore, there is a lack of binding standards and certifications that link technical innovations with legal requirements and thus provide a suitable set of rules to promote automation in outdoor areas and enable safe operation.
Regulations for the outdoor use of autonomous machines
With the launch of the FFG-funded GUARDIAN project ("Safety-GUaranteed Autonomous opeRation for machinery under DIverse Area coNditions"), an interdisciplinary team of research, industry and legal experts led by the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology has begun its work. "With this project, we want to further develop the technologies for autonomous work machines in line with the legal framework in order to recommend realisable standards and develop their test procedures. The aim is to ensure that autonomous machines can be used reliably in everyday life, i.e. even under difficult weather and working conditions," says Patrik Zips, project manager at the AIT
Centre for Vision, Automation & Control, whose research focuses on the development of autonomous machines.
In order to develop the necessary certifications and standards, the experts are focussing on researching the following areas of work:
- Development of outdoor benchmarking scenarios to define standard scenarios for machines in open environments that will serve as the basis for future certification requirements.
- Integration of advanced sensor technology and the fusion of multimodal sensors to reliably determine hazardous areas and safe zones - even under difficult weather conditions.
- Development of a fail-safe control and navigation system that ensures collision-free operation at all times.
- Combining technological innovations with legal requirements and social and ethical standards.
Two different machines are being used in tests to validate the developed technologies: a mobile forklift truck and a lorry-mounted knuckle boom crane from PALFINGER. Their autonomy functions are currently being developed in AIT's own open-air test centre, the Large-Scale Robotics Lab. Further tests, for example under different weather conditions, are to be carried out at the DigiTrans Test Centre for Automated Driving in St. Valentin. The project is being supported by experts in product safety and product liability law, in particular at the interface with artificial intelligence (AI) by Dr Andreas Eustacchio, lawyer at EUSTACCHIO Rechtsanwälte and leading legal expert, as well as Business Upper Austria for the early involvement of all key stakeholders from producers, legal and ethical institutions to end customers.
The GUARDIAN project will make a significant contribution to raising the safety and reliability standards for autonomous machines. At the same time, the social acceptance of these technologies will be strengthened through a clear legal framework.
Project partners and funding
The GUARDIAN project is funded by the FFG as part of the "Digital Technologies 2023" programme of the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK).