Based on contributions by Sem.db.
Working with an industrial robot arm is rewarding but genuinely dangerous if you don’t plan for it. Use this checklist before you start running programs with people nearby.
What you need
- A safety contact at your company/host organization and at school
- Materials for a physical barrier (fencing/cage), warning signage, and door/entrance sensors
- Access to the robot’s emergency stop wiring
Steps
1. Be realistic about your rules
A perfect safety protocol is useless if you can’t actually follow it in practice. Keep rules realistic so your team can stick to them, and plan for how they’ll be enforced:
- Make sure everyone in your group knows the rules and understands them.
- Make sure people working near your project know the rules too, so they can also catch a mistake.
- Discuss the rules with your company contact (required).
- Discuss the rules with school (required).
2. Build a safety cage
Make the robot’s workspace not easily accessible, so nobody — including you — walks up to it without thinking. When building the cage, consider:
- One entrance only.
- The cage boundary placed outside the robot’s reach.
- Emergency stop(s) mounted outside the cage.
- Warning signs/stickers.
- An indirect entrance, so the robot can’t throw anything straight out through it.
- Sensors that detect whether the entrance is closed.
Not every point will apply to your setup — implement as many as you reasonably can. Better safe than sorry.
3. Define operating scenarios
The robot won’t always run the same way — define the rules per situation. For each scenario below, fill in the maximum speed and where onlookers and the operator are allowed to be:
| Scenario | Max speed | Onlooker location | Operator location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moving the robot by hand (jogging) | Outside the cage | Inside, only while holding the teach pendant and with the emergency stop within reach | |
| Running a program for the first time | |||
| Running a program without transporting items | |||
| Running a program while transporting items |
Related
- How to avoid and recover from singularity errors on a 6-axis robot
- Troubleshooting common FANUC robot errors
Rewritten and consolidated (Sept 2026) from the original student how-to’s: How to create a safe invideoment to work with an industrial robot.