The 'voice of the regulator'
Through weekly project meetings, Nick made suggestions to help make assurance more 'regulator friendly’ and educated peers on risks and hazards. He recommended putting features into the digital twin developed by the project team to make it risk-based for real-world application. This involved collaborating with a team of around 15 people leading on sensing, cyber security, digital twinning, and safety synthesis.
Nick was also part of the education and training elements of the project, including being a judge at the Manufacturing Robotics Challenge. He also designed and delivered a workshop that brought 20 people together from the HSE, industry, and CSI:Cobot and university researchers as a final element of the project. The workshop helped participants come up with detailed answers to issues that they had clearly been thinking a lot about. It gave rise to discussions about what might need to change in standards or legislation and helped generate ideas for further research.
Influencing standards
Nick’s learning and experience is likely to be a contributory factor in his thinking and technical work to develop a range of standards with collaborators from around the world.
Future work
More generally Nick reports that many parts of the HSE are interested in AI and autonomy as are other regulators who could benefit from the sort of collaboration he has enjoyed with AAIP.
He thinks attitudes are shifting from ‘AI + safety = no thanks’ to a growing understanding that there is a need to develop along this route. Assurance is critical to that path. Consequently, HSE are currently developing policy on assurance of autonomous systems that to some extent will have been influenced by his mutually beneficial relationship with AAIP.
