Functional Safety Process for Autonomous Mobile Robots: Lifecycle Engineering Overview

This chapter of the AMR Engineering Process and Development Manual explains functional safety for autonomous mobile robots, which must operate safely even under faults, unexpected environmental changes, and human interaction. It distinguishes functional safety from general product safety, which focuses on physical design features, by addressing how electrical, software, sensing, and control systems behave in abnormal conditions. The text stresses that functional safety should be applied across the entire product lifecycle rather than as a final-stage task, especially as AMRs increasingly share dynamic workspaces with people and forklifts. Its core goal is to reduce risk to an acceptable level by identifying hazards and implementing protective mechanisms, since complete elimination of failures is impossible. The chapter also defines key terms such as hazard, risk, fault, failure, and accident, and emphasizes system-level analysis because faults can propagate across interconnected subsystems.