ConCerT: Automated Continuous Certification and Testing of Industrial Robots

In the fast-paced manufacturing environment, manually certifying a single robotic safety module is a significant bottleneck. The Automated Continuous Certification and Testing of Industrial Robots (ConCerT) addresses this by developing an AI-assisted workflow that performs complex testing in a fraction of the time.

ConCerT will leverage artificial intelligence to potentially revolutionise the way industrial robots are tested and certified. By combining cloud simulations and AI-driven automation, the project aims to significantly reduce the time required for safety validation while maintaining the strictest safety standards.

The ConCerT project introduces a continuous, automated process that meets the needs for a high level of trust in the correctness of the system. This testing process will be specifically tailored to satisfy the functional business requirements and safety-related requirements that are necessary for the certification of the final system. All testing environments will be available both virtually and physically. Throughout the automated test process, resources will be utilised optimally to ensure both test efficiency and frugal resource consumption.

An intelligent approach to robot safety

The project will use AI-driven software for continuous testing regimes to identify potential safety risks more efficiently than current methods. ConCerT focuses on three core areas:

• AI-driven test planning: The system learns from previous results to identify gaps and weaknesses in the robotic system, automatically generating smarter test plans that focus on the most critical scenarios.
• Cloud-based simulation and fault injection: By combining virtual simulations in the cloud with physical hardware testing, the team can cover a much broader range of situations, including controlled fault injections that would be too risky or time-consuming to perform manually.
• Continuous certification: By embedding testing directly into the development process, the project ensures that robotic systems comply with standardised certification requirements at all times, providing end-users with faster access to new technology.

Partners

• ABB Robotics Norway AS
• Simula Research Laboratory

ABB and Simula have a long-standing collaboration with numerous R&D projects over 15 years. By uniting ABB’s leadership in industrial robotics with Simula’s research into software testing and AI, the project creates solutions that are applicable to the future of autonomous manufacturing.

Funding

The project is supported by the Research Council of Norway under the IPN scheme, with additional contributions and investment from ABB.