移動ロボットの屋外公共空間を用いた実証実験におけるリスクマネジメント手法

—「つくばチャレンジ」における事例分析—

抄録

For the utilization of service robots, demonstrative experiments in real situations are necessary. Through the experiments, one can verify the effectiveness of research results and also can find new research issues. However, the legal systems and safety guidelines for the demonstrative experiments of the service robots are not established well. Hence, it is difficult to carry out the experiments effectively, which could degrade research progress for service robot utilization. Therefore, based on a case study in “Real World Robot Challenge”, which is a demonstrative experiment for autonomous mobile robots in outdoor public space, we proposed some basics of safety guidelines for the demonstrative experiments for mobile service robot in the paper. Specifically, the issues which must be considered in the public space demonstrative experiments and their explicit framework are clarified based on the international safety standards. In addition, we propose a risk assessment method and a risk management system of which the researchers are easy to use in the experiments, and by using these, some protective measures for the risks are developed which are feasible and suitable in the present situation. According to this, R and D activities in real situations will be promoted, which accelerate the utilization of service robots.