• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.496-504
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• 2021

Background: With the increasing demand for industrial robots and the "noncontact" trend, it is an appropriate point in time to examine whether risk assessments conducted for robot operations are performed effectively to identify and eliminate the risks of injury or harm to operators. This study discusses why robot accidents resulting in harm to operators occur repetitively despite implementing control measures and proposes corrective actions for risk assessments. Methods: This study collected 369 operator-injured robot accidents in Korea over the last decade and reconstructed them into the mechanism of injury, work being undertaken, and bodily location of the injury. Then, through the techniques of Systematic Cause Analysis Technique (SCAT) and Root Cause Analysis (RCA), this study analyzed the root and direct causes of robot accidents that had occurred. Causes identified included physical hazards and complex combinations of hazards, such as psychological, organizational, and systematic errors. The requirements of risk assessments regarding robot operations were examined, and three case studies of robot-involved tasks were investigated. The three assessments presented were: camera module processing, electrical discharge machining, and a panel-flipping robot installation. Results: After conducting RCA and comparing the three assessments, it was found that two-thirds of injury-occurring from robot accidents, causative factors included psychological and personal traits of robot operators. However, there were no evaluations of the identifications of personal aspects in the three assessment cases. Conclusion: Therefore, it was concluded that personal factors of operators, which had been overlooked in risk assessments so far, need to be included in future risk assessments on robot operations.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.213-216
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• 2013

This paper presents a combination of linear Fresnel lenses optimized for ${\times}25$ solar concentration. The combined lens consists of $5{\times}5$ linear Fresnel lenses. Each Fresnel lens is of $10{\times}10$ mm and optimized to tilt the incoming light onto a solar cell of the same size. All of the optimized Fresnel segments have the same pattern height of 35 ${\mu}m$, draft angle of $4^{\circ}$, and edge groove round of 1 ${\mu}m$ but with different facet angles varying from $14.1^{\circ}$ to $31.2^{\circ}$. The solar concentrating efficiency of the combination is shown to be over 80% and more robust than a conventional single ${\times}25$ circular Fresnel lens in terms of pointing misalignment and manufacturing errors. A sensitivity analysis finds that the edge groove round should be kept as small as machining allows since the concentrating efficiency drops ~5% per 1 ${\mu}m$ increase of the edge groove.