Safety Third: Autonomous Revolution

Erik Reynolds sits down with Russell Nickerson, Partnership Engagement Liaison at MassRobotics, the world's largest independent nonprofit robotics hub, and founder of Collabots, an entertainment robotics consultancy with clients including Cirque du Soleil.
Russell shares what he sees every day working with startups, corporate partners, and academia: the gap between a robot that works in the lab and one that survives the real world. They dig into UX failures, E-stop recovery on a live stage, why demo day is when robots find new ways to fail, and the overlooked infrastructure problem nobody is talking about, the shortage of integrators and repair shops that can keep robots running long after deployment.
They close on what separates the startups that reach deployment from the ones that don't, and why Russell believes the answer has less to do with the robot and more to do with the customer.

Join Reynolds & Moore at MassRobotics in Boston this October:
R&M Physical AI & Safety Summit, October 13, 1:00-5:00 PM EDT. Free to attend. Register here.
Understanding ISO/IEC TS 22440: Artificial Intelligence – Functional Safety and AI Systems, a two-day in-person training in partnership with RMAI, October 14-15. Seats are limited. Register here.

Check out MassRobotics: https://www.massrobotics.org/
Check out Collabots: https://collabots.net/
Check out our work: https://reynolds-moore.com

Phillip Hansel, CEO and Co-founder of AIOps, joins Erik Reynolds to talk about what happens when reinforcement learning shows up on the factory floor. Phillip spent more than a decade as a control systems engineer in oil, gas, and chemical processing, and now builds AI for the same kind of plants he once worked in.
They cover the virtual operator, an AI agent trained to run a process the way a seasoned human would. They get into why shaping that agent's behavior makes the modern controls engineer as much psychologist as engineer.
The conversation also gets into the plants where these agents already run, a 20-year control problem one of them quietly solved, and why Phillip is adamant this technology exists to back up human operators rather than replace them.

More on ⁠AIOps: https://ai-ops.com/
More on Reynolds & Moore: https://reynolds-moore.com/

Jordan Punch, Senior Functional Safety Engineer at Reynolds and Moore, joins Erik Reynolds to talk about what it takes to write a safety standard for AI from scratch. As a voting member of ISO SC42 JWG4, the working group developing ISO/IEC TS 22440, Jordan has spent the past two years helping shape the first international standard for AI functional safety.
They cover the committee draft process and the roughly 1,700 comments national bodies returned, each of which has to be answered before publication. They get into the difference between a technical report, a technical specification, and a full international standard, and what each means for certification.
The conversation also gets into the publication timeline, why it could slip from early 2027 into later that year, and the one thing Jordan wants engineers and safety managers to take away as 22440 moves toward release.
Want to understand ISO/IEC TS 22440 in more depth? Reynolds and Moore is hosting two upcoming events for you:
ISO/IEC TS 22440: Inside the Standard, a 45-minute webinar with Jordan on June 30, 2026 at 10 AM CDT.
Understanding ISO/IEC TS 22440, a two-day training in Boston on October 14–15, 2026.
Register Today: www.reynolds-moore.com/events

Check out our work: www.reynolds-moore.com

Erik welcomes back Sensory Robotics' Chris Edwards, Founder and CEO, and Mark Gagas, COO, one year after their first appearance on Safety Third: Autonomous Revolution.
In the year since their first appearance, Sensory Robotics completed verification and validation of the SR1 system under UL 1740 after 19 months of work, navigating standards that were not written for their technology. The system now includes an AI body tracking layer, with the data feeding into a new offering called SR Insight.
The conversation covers the certification process, their go-to-market approach through system integrators, the DoD SBIR project they secured, and where humanoid robotics fits into the safety picture.

More on Sensory Robotics: https://sensoryrobotics.com
Check out our work: https://reynolds-moore.com/
Missed Chris and Mark's first episode? Listen here.

In this episode, Erik Reynolds talks with Dr. Ricard Picas Prat, Advanced Solution Engineer at Novanta Inc., about functional safety for dynamically stable robots. Ricard brings a background spanning academic research, hardware engineering, and years of leading SIL 3 and PL E functional safety certifications at what is now Novanta's servo drives division.
They cover how classical safety functions like safe torque off and safe brake control work, and why those approaches fall apart for humanoids and quadrupeds. When a dynamically stable robot loses power, it doesn't stop safely. It falls.
The conversation also gets into the challenge of writing a standard for technology that is still being invented. Ricard is doing that work firsthand as an active contributor to ISO TC 299 Working Group 12, while simultaneously building products for the market those standards will eventually govern.

More on Novanta Inc: www.novanta.com
Check out our work: www.reynolds-moore.com