Safety Third: Autonomous Revolution

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
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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
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In honor of Reynolds & Moore's 10 year anniversary, co-founders Erik and Missy Reynolds sit down with producer Ginny Spellman to talk about how the company got built and how the functional safety industry has changed over that time.
They cover the founding story, the culture Erik and Missy wanted to build from day one, and what it took to grow from a one-person consultancy to a global team. The conversation also gets into how the market for functional safety has shifted over the last decade, the role Missy is stepping into around developing and training Reynolds & Moore engineers, and where the company is headed in the next 10 years.

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

Paul Schmitt, Director of Engineering at Reynolds & Moore, joins Erik Reynolds to explore what the safety community still has not solved: how robots decide what to do. Paul brings decades of experience across Ford, iRobot, and autonomous trucking to a conversation about the behavior layer in physical AI.
They cover human-robot interaction research, including a study on how pedestrians actually respond to driverless vehicles, and why the answer had nothing to do with lights or sounds. Paul and Erik also dig into behavior hierarchies and the trolley problem applied to real robotics scenarios.
The conversation also gets into why current machine learning safety standards still read more like guidelines than engineering requirements. Paul shares details on his work as a co-author of "The ML FMEA in Action: Lessons from Applications of Machine Learning Safety," documenting how the open-sourced ML FMEA framework connects machine learning development decisions to system-level safety outcomes, with applications across autonomous vehicles, humanoid robotics, and beyond.

Read Paul's paper: The ML FMEA in Action: Lessons from Applications of Machine Learning Safety
Check out our work: www.reynolds-moore.com

Bodo Seifert, Principal Automotive Functional Safety Engineer and Practice Lead at TÜV Rheinland, joins Erik Reynolds to share what certification bodies actually see when companies come in for assessment.
They cover the organizational and technical red flags that assessors look for, and why good engineering practice and a formal safety case are not the same thing. Bodo draws on experience across automotive, robotics, and autonomous trucking to explain what separates companies that certify successfully from those that do not.
The conversation also gets into the shift from deterministic functional safety to AI-enabled systems. Bodo explains what ISO/TR 5469 and ISO/IEC TS 22440 mean for teams building physical AI, and why transparency and explainability remain the hardest requirements for machine learning developers to accept. They also discuss why strategic collaborations like the one between Reynolds & Moore and TÜV Rheinland matter for companies navigating certification for the first time.

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