Collaborative robots (cobots) allow for flexible manufacturing, supporting more customised product designs. Although safety is key for socio-technical human-cobot workplaces, existing safety assessment support like standards and guidelines require extensive experience and can be experienced as overwhelming. To make cobot risk assessments more accessible, especially for novices, and increase traceability from hazard to risk to mitigation, this paper presents a matrix-based approach that decomposes this daunting activity into smaller better manageable steps.

Collaborative robots (“cobots”) have attracted growing attention in academia and industry over the last years. Due to in-built safety features and easy programming, they allow for close human-cobot collaboration and support e.g. flexible manufacturing. However, the lack of a common understanding what a cobot is along with its traditional focus on arm-based cobots complicates further research and industry adoption. Thus, this paper analyses the variety of definitions in literature incl. standards and practice examples to derive a consistent and holistic definition and taxonomy of what a collaborative robot is. Aside from contributing a structured overview of various forms of human-robot collaboration, this builds an important foundation for future research as it systematically differentiates different cobot types. Companies and other organisations will benefit by a better understanding of what type of cobot they need and how to ensure safe collaboration.