In the quest for using duplicates for working, in place of human beings, several countries have developed this area of robotics. While Japan, Europe and USA are the leaders, there are other countries also, in this area. There could be several reasons for development of robots, e.g. hazardous jobs, and obtaining perfection in quality of production etc. But it is a hi-tech field. The number of robots in use is growing. For their functioning, electrical, mechanical, pneumatic, electronic, and hydraulic parts are used, and hence there are many places of failures. We all would like to have, a reliable and safe robot, with minimum maintenance costs. In the past, there have been cases of accidents with robots, in which various parts of the human body have been involved (and also fatal accidents), and therefore safety during use of robots is very important. This book has twelve Chapters, bibliography of the connected literature in the appendix, and offers a comprehensive approach to this subject. Robots are complex, and sophisticated machines. Therefore, the needs of robot maintenance, requirement of special tools for repair, preventive maintenance, inspections, and safe guarding of robot maintenance personnel are to be taken care of properly. Installation and testing of robots are important factors, and so study of robot performance testing, robot reliability testing, selective mathematical models, robot specifications, selective robot organizations, robot manufacturer’s capabilities etc.
is necessary. Therefore, besides awareness of safety and education and training in this field, we have to study and understand robotics and fundamentals of robot safety, viz. problems and considerations of safety, human factors in robotics, reliability and maintenance of robots, robot effectiveness and hazards, reliability surveys, measures and analysis, hazard rate etc., so that safety with robots can be ensured. Failure data of any system gives important feedback, and so we have to study the failure data with respect to robots, reliability data sources, failure report forms, failure recording and hazard plotting methods. Any accident is an undesired event. Hence the real life examples of robot accidents in various countries should be specially studied and analyzed, for their characteristics, causes and effects, and research conducted in this field, and steps taken for their prevention. Notwithstanding the above, for use of robots, guidelines for safeguarding humans, and training for reducing human error etc., are necessary. This book is useful for all practicing engineers, engineering students, researchers and others connected with robots.