Autonomous Vehicles on the Factory Floor: An Approach to Safety

This paper provides insights into a safety assurance procedure and its application in an Autonomous Vehicle (AV) solution. The product, object of study, is composed of a kit that is integrated into a stacker forklift truck to add autonomous features to the exclusively manually driven vehicle. Integrating the kit in the conventional vehicle gives new applications to the machine, making the CE marking, previously affixed, no longer valid. The focus of this work is the safety assurance of the solution incorporated in the vehicle. After implementing the procedure, the AV solution is ready to start the last stage of the proof-of-concept phase: to operate in the factory environment. The factory environment will be shared with humans and other vehicles operated by humans, increasing the need for behavior reliability.