Integrating safety in machine design

The Machinery Directive (Directive 2006/42/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on machinery, and amending Directive 95/16/EC) is an instrument designed to ensure the safety of people when operating, transporting or handling machinery. Its scope is particularly broad, and its approach to risk is intended to be exhaustive. In other words, all the risks arising from the use of machines were taken into account when it was drafted. What's more, the approach to risk is pragmatic, since the Machinery Directive does not prohibit risk, and thus contemplates the possibility of residual risk.

Its requirements apply equally to industrial and domestic robotics. This is borne out by the introductory recitals to the Machinery Directive: "Member States are responsible for ensuring, on their territory, the health and safety of persons, in particular workers and consumers and, where appropriate, domestic animals and property, in particular with regard to risks arising from the use of machinery".

It is also a so-called "New Approach" directive. As such, it is limited to essential safety requirements, and does not address technical considerations. These technical considerations are left to the standardization bodies, which will produce the harmonized, voluntary standards needed to comply with the essential safety requirements. These "new approach" instruments respond to a problem that arose during the application of older directives, whose particularly technical requirements invariably led to the obsolescence of the required technology.

The first version of the Machinery Directive dates back to 1989 (Directive 89/392/EEC), came into force on January 1 1993, and was first amended in 1991. The Machinery Directive was last updated in 2006. As this is a directive, its requirements had to be transposed into French law, and more specifically into the French Labor Code. This transposition phase should disappear in the likely event that the project to transform the Machinery Directive into a regulation is maintained.

Article 2a) defines a machine as "an assembly equipped or intended to be equipped with a drive system other than directly applied human or animal power, consisting of linked parts or components, at least one of which moves, and which are joined together for a specific application".

Thus, the force driving the system and enabling the machine's mobility cannot be human or animal. It can be hydraulic or electrical, for example. The requirement for a defined application is also noteworthy. Indeed, because of this condition, a cobot, or collaborative application robot, without a defined application, cannot be considered a machine.

The Machinery...