Requiring people to avoid the robot is unacceptable
Aliases: collision avoidance responsibility · system-side protection · foreseeable non-yielding
What it is
Robot-side collision responsibility requires a robot to detect, slow, yield, and stop rather than make safety depend on people seeing and evading it. Cues and marks aid coordination, but consequences remain limited when a person misses, misunderstands, or cannot move quickly.
Why it happens
Attention, sensing, and mobility vary, and bystanders owe no training. Assuming prompt avoidance makes distraction, crowding, children, and impairment single points of failure. Robot- and environment-side protection turns human response into added margin rather than a necessary condition.
Studying it
Non-yielding, delayed, wrong-direction, fallen, and mobility-device scenarios should measure robot separation and stopping. Surrogates, replay, and limited speed avoid exposure. Throughput must not hide efficiency obtained by forcing people aside.
Where it stops holding
Shared-space users should not deliberately create danger, but this is not a primary safeguard. Malicious extremes may require isolation or service withdrawal. Human cues improve fluency without bearing final collision protection.
Applying it
- Treat non-yielding as foreseeable in risk analysis and never make bystander training a critical control.
- Maintain protection for stationary, suddenly entering, and slow-moving people, stopping rather than alarming them out of the way.
- Measure robot-induced retreat, abrupt turns, forced detours, and near misses, not collision alone.
Related
- Same group: X5.01.1 Speed and force must be limited according to proximity · X5.01.2 Safety boundaries must be perceptible to people
- Adjacent: X5.02 Movement in shared space · X5.06 Presence of vulnerable populations
- Search terms:
collision avoidance responsibility·foreseeable misuse·vulnerable road user