Future Technologies in Safety and Risk Management

Richard Green, agricultural engineer at Harper Adams.

"We can use technology to double food production,"

Drones

"We predict drones, mounted with RGB or multispectral cameras, will take off every morning before the farmer gets up, and identify where within the field there is a pest or a problem," says Green. As well as visible light, these cameras would be able to collect data from the invisible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that could allow farmers to pinpoint a fungal disease, for example, before it becomes established.

Fitts List (1951): MABA - MABA Humans appear to surpass present-day machines wrt

1. Ability to detect small amounts of visual or acoustic energy. 2. Ability to perceive patterns of light or sound. 3. Ability to improvise and use flexible . procedures. 4. Ability to store very large amounts of information for long periods and to recall relevant facts the appropriate time. 5. Ability to reason inductively. 6. Ability to exercise judgement.

Present-day machines appear to surpass humans wrt

1. Ability to respond quickly to control signals, and to apply great force smoothly and precisely. 2. Ability to perform repetitive, routine tasks. 3. Ability to store information briefly and then to erase it completely. 4. Ability to reason deductively, including computational ability. 5. Ability to handle highly complex operations i.e. to do many different things at once.

Simon Blackmore, an engineer at Harper Adams University in Newport, UK.

"I believe, by moving to a robotic agricultural system, we can make crop production significantly more efficient and more sustainable,"

Robotics engineer George Kantor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

"There is the potential for intelligent robots to change the economic model of farming so that it becomes feasible to be a small producer again,"

Difficulty in selecting priorities and making trade-offs:

At the same time that potential losses from single accidents are increasing, companies are coping with aggressive and competitive environments in which cost and productivity play a major role in short-term decision making. Government agencies must cope with budget limitations in an age of increasingly expensive technology. Pressures are great to take shortcuts and to place higher priority on cost and schedule risks than on safety. Decision makers need the information required to make these tough decisions.

Reduced ability to learn from experience:

At the same time that the development of new technology has sprinted forward, the time to market for new products has greatly decreased, and strong pressures exist to decrease this time even further. The average time to translate a basic technical discovery into a commercial product in the early part of this century was thirty years. Today our technologies get to market in two to three years and may be obsolete in five. We no longer have the luxury of carefully testing systems and designs to understand all the potential behaviours and risks before commercial or scientific use.

Nanobots

Can mimic white blood cells and fight off infections in the body

Remote medical care

Chances are you have been in a situation before where, if an accident were to happen, medical professionals would not have been able to reach you in time. To some of us in the developed world it's a rare occurrence. But even in 2016 billions live outside of the reach of conventional emergency services. With InTouch Health, patients in remote areas have access to high-quality emergency consultations for stroke, cardiovascular, and burn services. On the patient's side it can be accessed on a tablet or personal computer, and clinicians can also use the same type of devices as best suits their needs.

Robot nurse

During a hospital stay patients interact with nurses the most. They draw blood, check your vital signs, check on your condition and take care of your hygiene if needed. They are often overwhelmed by physically and mentally daunting tasks, and the result is often an unpleasant experience for everyone involved. Robotic nurses will help carry this burden in the future. They are designed to be able to carry out repetitive tasks. This way the staff has more energy to deal with issues that require human decision making skills and empathy. Certain robots can even take your blood sample.

Richard Green at Harper Adams in the UK

Green has developed a strawberry harvester that he says can pick the fruit faster than humans. It relies on stereoscopic vision with RGB cameras to capture depth, but it is its powerful algorithms that allow it to pick a strawberry every two seconds. People can pick 15 to 20 a minute, Green estimates. He thinks that supervised groups of robots can step into the shoes of strawberry pickers in around five years.

Pesticides and drones

Modern technology that can autonomously eliminate pests and target agrichemicals better will reduce collateral damage to wildlife, lower resistance and cut costs. Rather than spraying a whole field, the pesticide could be delivered to the right spot in the quantity needed. The potential reductions in pesticide use are impressive. According to researchers at the University of Sydney's Australian Centre for Field Robotics, targeted spraying of vegetables used 0.1% of the volume of herbicide used in conventional blanket spraying. Scientists at Harper Adams are testing a robot that does away with chemicals altogether by blasting weeds close to crops with a laser. "Cameras identify the growing point of the weed and our laser, which is no more than a concentrated heat source, heats it up to 95 °C, so the weed either dies or goes dormant," says Blackmore.

New types of hazards:

Advances in science and societal changes have created new hazards. For example, the public is increasingly being exposed to new manmade chemicals or toxins in our food and our environment. Large numbers of people may be harmed by unknown side effects of pharmaceutical products. Misuse or overuse of antibiotics has given rise to resistant microbes. The most common safety engineering strategies have limited impact on many of these new hazards.

Fast pace of technological change:

Although learning from past accidents is still an important part of safety engineering, lessons learned over centuries about designing to prevent accidents may be lost or become ineffective when older technologies are replaced with new ones. Technology is changing much faster than our engineering techniques are responding to these changes. New technology introduces unknowns into our systems and creates new paths to losses.

Future Technology - Opportunity or Threat: Agriculture

Are drones the autonomous shepherds of the future?

Changing nature of accidents:

As our technology and society change, so do the causes of accidents. System engineering and system safety engineering techniques have not kept up with the rapid pace of technological innovation. Digital technology, in particular, has created a quiet revolution in most fields of engineering. Many of the approaches to prevent accidents that worked on electromagnetic components - such as replication of components to protect against individual component failure - are ineffectual in controlling accidents that arise fom the use of digital systems and software.

Pros and cons of robotic medicine

On the one hand, medical robots increase human productivity and offer a broad platform for innovation (particularly with microrobots). On the other hand, acquisition and operating costs can be quite steep, and robots challenge humans for jobs. These pros and cons have largely been the same for new machine technologies in every field. Most importantly, though, in this case, medical robots have the potential for transforming multiple aspects of medicine, except perhaps for that which is most important—the physician-patient relationship, where practice remains a human art involving emotions.

CON: ROBOTICS REPLACING JOBS?

One of the first signs of the robot apocalypse, according to some, is the steady job take over. First the blue collar jobs, then in increasing numbers, the highly trained and more specialized professions. In response to such fears, we've already begun to see some pushback from the humans, as robotic technologies in medicine face rejection from their human counterparts. Just last week Johnson and Johnson stopped selling Sedasys, a robotic technology that administered anesthesia to patients under the operation of a nurse or clinician. The Washington Post noted that the American Society of Anesthesiologists campaigned against Sedasys long before it was ever released to the market -- resulting in the technology eventually being reduced to a machine that performed only routine procedures like colonoscopies.

Large-scale practices in agriculture

Over the centuries, as farmers have adopted more technology in their pursuit of greater yields, the belief that 'bigger is better' has come to dominate farming, rendering small-scale operations impractical - Anthony King

Healthcare:

Skin cancer classification of Convolutional Neural Networks, or CNN, and dermatologists. Used a data set of 129,450 Developed an algorithm and validated it. The deep learning CNN outperforms the average of the dermatologists at skin cancer classification (keratinocyte carcinomas and melanomas) using photographic and dermoscopic images. The deep learning CNN exhibits reliable cancer classification when tested on a larger dataset. This algorithm diagnosed and recognized cancer at a higher level than medical doctors on a larger dataset.

Animal tracking

Smart collars — a bit like the wearable devices designed to track human health and fitness — have been used to monitor cows in Scotland since 2010. Developed by Glasgow start-up Silent Herdsman, the collar monitors fertility by tracking activity and uses this to alert farmers to when a cow is ready to mate, sending a message to his or her laptop or smartphone. The collars (pictured), also detect early signs of illness by monitoring the average time each cow spends eating and ruminating, and warning the farmer via a smartphone if either declines. Cameras are also improving the detection of threats to cow health. The inflammatory condition mastitis — often the result of a bacterial infection — is one of the biggest costs to the dairy industry, causing declines in milk production or even death. Thermal-imaging cameras installed in cow sheds can spot hot, inflamed udders, allowing animals to be treated early.

Allocation of Functions: Dominant Trend

• Designer mechanises or automates as many functions as possible, and the humans are allocated whatever functions remain. • Basis for this approach is that humans are unpredictable and sources of error. • Main practical constraints are technical feasibility and cost.

Problems:

• May lead to sub-optimal performance if the technology cannot meet the requirements of the system e.g. small batch manufacturing. • Negative impacts for the people working in such systems. • Complex systems often perform less well than expected. Therefore, humans are often required but were not designed in. • Need to include scope for re-organising production by including behavioural and organisational requirements early in design.

Robot Farmers

• Targeted weed spraying.

Robotics in healthcare

While there are concerns for machines replacing people in the workforce, the benefits are tempting. Imagine how a machine that doesn't need sleep or food, doesn't have prejudices that we humans so often have could change the way we treat people who are sick and vulnerable. With some preparation and forethought, we can make sure the human touch stays relevant in medicine while taking advantage of our metallic allies.

Destroying MRSA

Hospital acquired infections (such as MRSA) are among the leading causes of death in the US. According to CDC statistics used by Xenex show that in the United States, 1 in every 25 patients will contract an HAI. Of those, 1 in 9 will die. In addition to the human cost, it takes its toll financially as well. These infections cost more than $30 billion dollars a year. Xenex, produces a unique robot. It uses high intensity ultraviolet light to disinfect any space in a healthcare facility quickly and efficiently. The Xenex Robot is more effective in causing cellular damage to microorganisms than other devices designed for disinfection. It reduces the number of hospital acquired infections.

More complex relationships between humans and automation:

Humans are increasingly sharing control of systems with automation and moving into positions of higher-level decision making with automation implementing the decisions. These changes are leading to new types of human error - such as various types of mode confusion - and a new distribution of human errors, for example, increasing errors of omission versus commission. Inadequate communication between humans and machines is becoming an increasingly important factor in accidents. Current approaches to safety engineering are unable to deal with these new types of errors. All human behaviour is influenced by the context in which it occurs, and operators in high-tech systems are often at the mercy of the design of the automation they use or the social and organisational environment in which they work. Many recent accidents that have been blamed on operator error could more accurately be labelled as resulting from flaws in the environment in which they operate. New approaches to reducing accidents through improved design of the workplace and of automation are long overdue.

Asimov's Laws

In 1942, the science fiction author Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround in which he introduced three laws that governed the behaviour of robots. Ref EU Reoport RR/1115573EN.doc Directed in EU at designers, producers and operators of robots Product liability - producer of a product is liable for a malfunction Robots can autonomously learn from their own variable experience and interact with their environment in a unique and unforeseeable manner. 1. A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law (Asimov, I. 1943) 0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

CON: ELEVATED COSTS AND COMPATIBILITY ISSUES

In 2014, studies showed that robotic surgeries not only cost significantly more but actually resulted in more complications than those performed by human doctors. There's also the added clinical costs of training and maintenance for robotic technologies, all of which can lead to added cost for the patient. Many robotic systems are enormously bulky and require f instruments and tools, many of which are not compatible with standard surgical instruments and tools used by human surgeons. For delicate and precise surgeries, stabilizers are often required, which can further limit the space in the operating room as well. In time, the belief is that as robotic technologies enhance, they will shrink, hopefully alleviating some of these issues. Researchers at Brigham Young University are currently working on making origami-inspired surgical tools that can fit into incisions that are so small that they don't need stitches to close.

Agricultural Technologies

In greenhouses devoted to fruit and vegetable production, engineers are exploring automation as a way to reduce costs and boost quality. Devices to monitor vegetable growth, as well as robotic pickers, are currently being tested. For livestock farmers, sensing technologies can help to manage the health and welfare of their animals. And work is underway to improve monitoring and maintenance of soil quality, and to eliminate pests and disease without resorting to indiscriminate use of agrichemicals.

Pro: ROBOTIC TECHNOLOGIES INCREASING HUMAN PRODUCTIVITY

In the future algorithms and robotic technologies have the potential to assume the diagnostic, prescription, and patient monitoring duties of physicians in a clinical setting. These functions account for roughly 80 percent of what doctors currently do on a given day, freeing them up for other, more pressing tasks.

Differential seeding

Soil mapping opens the door to sowing different crop varieties in one field to better match shifting soil properties such as water availability. "You could differentially seed a field, for example, planting deep-rooting barley or wheat varieties in more sandy parts," says Maurice Moloney, chief executive of the Global Institute for Food Security in Saskatoon, Canada. Growing multiple crops together could also lead to smarter use of agrichemicals. "Nature is strongly against monoculture, which is one reason we have to use massive amounts of herbicide and pesticides," says van Henten. "It is about making the best use of resources." Mixed sowing would challenge an accepted pillar of agricultural wisdom: that economies of scale and the bulkiness of farm machinery mean vast fields of a single crop is the most-efficient way to farm, and the bigger the machine, the more-efficient the process. Some of the heaviest harvesters weigh 60 tonnes, cost more than a top-end sports car and leave a trail of soil compaction in their wake that can last for years. But if there is no need for the farmer to drive the machine, then one large vehicle that covers as much area as possible is no longer needed. "As soon as you remove the human component, size is irrelevant," says van Henten. Small, autonomous robots make mixed planting feasible and would not crush the soil.

Surgical Precision - daVinchi

Surgery is an unpleasant experience at best. The waiting lists can be long depending on available manpower and resources. daVinci helps alleviate the problem. It has been used in a wide variety of fields from head and neck to urologic surgery. The surgeon is in complete control of the system at all times, however as the machine has greater reach and flexibility, smaller incisions made with more precision are enough to access the problem areas. Perhaps the most prominent example of robotics used in clinical care is Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci, which is a promise and perils of robots in medicine. While the roughly $2-million robot can offer superhuman dexterity, it has also been linked to a "nonnegligible number of technical difficulties and complications,"

Eliminating crop enemies

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that 20-40% of global crop yields are lost each year to pests and diseases, despite the application of around two-million tonnes of pesticide. Intelligent devices, such as robots and drones, could allow farmers to slash agrichemical use by spotting crop enemies earlier to allow precise chemical application or pest removal, for example. "The market is demanding foods with less herbicide and pesticide, and with greater quality," says Red Whittaker, a robotics engineer at Carnegie Mellon. "That challenge can be met by robots."

Eldert van Henten, an agricultural engineer at Wageningen University in the Netherlands

The Netherlands is famed for the efficiency of its fruit- and vegetable-growing greenhouses, but these operations rely on people to pick the produce. "Humans are still better than robots, but there is a lot of effort going into automatic harvesting," says Eldert van Henten, an agricultural engineer at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, who is working on a sweet-pepper harvester. The challenge is to quickly and precisely identify the pepper and avoid cutting the main stem of the plant. The key lies in fast, precise software. "We are performing deep learning with the machine so it can interpret all the data from a colour camera fast," says van Henten. "We even feed data from regular street scenes into the neural network to better train it."

Hurdle to commercialisation

The big hurdle to commercialization, however, is that food producers demand robots that can pick all kinds of vegetables, says van Henten. The variety of shapes, sizes and colours of tomatoes, for instance, makes picking them a tough challenge.

Chemical testing robots

The great thing about robots is that they can be built to be so durable that they can overtake tasks that for humans would be simply too dangerous. Take Petman for example: designed for testing chemical protection clothing. It moves freely and can even adjust suit temperature and simulate sweating to provide realistic conditions. Such solutions not only minimize the risk to human testers, in the long run mechanization of the supply chain makes production cheaper as well. Robots don't need vacations, to eat or sleep. With a new generation of them more sturdy, agile and flexible than ever they increase productivity in all kind of factories.

Decreasing tolerance for single accidents:

The losses stemming from accidents are increasing with the cost and potential destructiveness of the systems we build. New scientific and technological discoveries have not only created new or increased hazards (such as radiation exposure and chemical pollution) but have also provided the means to harm increasing numbers of people as the scale of our systems increases and to impact future generations through environmental pollution and genetic damage. Financial losses and lost potential for scientific advances are also increasing in an age where, for example, a space craft may take ten years and up to a billion dollars to build, but only a few minutes to lose. Financial system meltdowns can affect the world's economy in our increasingly connected and interdependent global economy. Learning form accidents or major losses (the fly-fix-fly approach to safety) needs to be supplemented with increasing emphasis on preventing the first one.

Origami Robot

The origami robot, despite its size, is just as impressive as a super strong carrier one. When swallowed, the capsule containing it dissolves in the patient's stomach and unfolds itself. Controlled by a technician with the help of magnetic fields it can patch up wounds in the stomach lining or safely remove foreign items such as swallowed toys.

Soil

The richest resource for arable farmers is soil. But large harvesters damage and compact soil, and overuse of agrichemicals such as nitrogen fertilizer are bad for both the environment and a farmer's bottom line. Robotics and autonomous machines could help. Data from drones are being used for smarter application of nitrogen fertilizer. "Healthy vegetation reflects more near-infrared light than unhealthy vegetation," explains Barton. Bonirob (pictured) can measure other indicators of soil quality using various sensors and modules, including a moisture sensor and a penetrometer, which is used to assess soil compaction. Bonirob can take a sample of soil, liquidize it and analyse it to precisely map in real time characteristics such as pH and phosphorous levels.

The Internet of Things

The sharing economy refers to decentralised asset ownership and using information technology to find efficient matches between providers and users of 'x'. What are the risks to workplace safety through connecting of work equipment to (telecommunication) networks, including the internet e.g. connectivity/network failure etc.

ncreasing complexity and coupling:

Throughout history, invention and new technology have often gotten ahead of their scientific underpinnings and engineering knowledge, but the result has always been increased risk and accidents until science and engineering caught up. We are now in the position of having to catch up with our technological advances by greatly increasing power of current approaches to controlling risk and creating a new improved risk management strategy.