First project in the area of machine safety

Together with our research partners Phoenix Contact, TÜV SÜD and TH OWL, we successfully applied to the leading-edge cluster "it's OWL" with AutoS². "AutoS²" is the acronym for "Automatic Safety and Security Assessment System for Intelligent Machines", which is about the digitalization of today's time-consuming and manual assessments of machine safety. For the safe operation of machines and systems, safety-relevant monitoring functions (safety) must be set up and their reliability and effectiveness evaluated. Due to increasing networking, IT safety is also playing an increasingly important role. In AutoS², safety and security are therefore considered in equal measure. The complexity and effort of a risk assessment, which today is usually carried out manually by two experts, is increasing massively. This can be explained, for example, by the introduction of automatic reconfiguration technologies, such as plug-and-play, or by artificial intelligence processes in intelligent machines, so-called self-x technologies. The risk assessment of machines is thus one of the major obstacles today to using Industrie 4.0 technology in real applications.

The three building blocks of the research project

In the AutoS² research project, requirements for the automation of risk assessment are determined and possible semantics for the management shell are defined and implemented. The third building block is the implementation of an assessment algorithm that performs the risk assessment automatically.

This is how the idea was born

The realization that the two facets of safety and security are increasingly interrelated and should be considered together was the trigger for founding a working group in the CIIT. For more than a year, the safety and security experts of the CIIT members met at the Science-to-Business Center in Lemgo and developed a common understanding of the increasing dependence of safety and security in intelligent machines. The basis for the AutoS² project idea had been created.

Fraunhofer scientist Philip Kleen recalls: "Safety and security experts not only had to converge across company boundaries - a uniform vocabulary for the two previously separate disciplines of safety and security also had to be found within the individual companies." Dr. Stefan Benk, specialist manager for functional safety at Phoenix Contact, confirms, "The complexity of networked systems continues to increase - the risk assessment of the future must be digitally supported so that it remains manageable." CIIT Managing Director Margarethe Nickel is convinced: "Digitalization is based on networking and cooperation - both technically and organizationally. The winners of digitization will be those who invest in cooperation." Dr. Detlev Richter, Vice President TÜV SÜD Product Service GmbH, summarizes: "The research and cooperation culture in Lemgo, at the CIIT and the infrastructure of the SmartFactoryOWL are unique. Here, the challenges of safety and security integration for Industry 4.0 are being pragmatically addressed and solutions developed."