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The educational program focuses on robot safety awareness and closing the skills gap in advanced manufacturing. | Source: SICK

SICK and Festo Didactic have partnered to create a Safety Awareness Bundle that combines curriculum and hardware to teach students robot safety holistically. 

The Safety Awareness Bundle’s curriculum focuses on robot risk assessments and the implementation of the system approach. Festo Didactic developed the curriculum to help students learn industry best practices.  The hardware components consist of a Festo Didactic manufacture production system (MPS), a simulated Cyber-Physical Smart Factory with a six-axis robot, SICK area scanners, safety PLC and safety relay. 

“With such a demand for Smart Manufacturing methods to be demystified, students who have been exposed to this sort of implementation have a real advantage when it comes to applying to jobs compared to students not provided the same experiential learning and job training,” Ted Rozier, Director of Engineering at Festo Didactic North America, said.

Festo Didactic’s curriculum walks students through the Six-Step Method of Robotics and Automation equipment safety. Students will have a better understanding of risk assessment, safe design, technical protective measures, administrative measures, overall validation of the machine, deployment of machinery and definitions to terminology like performance measures, areas of severity and more.

SICK and Festo Didactic made their Safety Awareness Bundle robot agnostic so that the information students learn can be applied to any leading robot manufacturer. Festo Didactic also considers the kinds of robots installed inside production plans near the training institution when selecting which robot to have the students work with. 

“This approach ensures that students can qualify for jobs locally. Regardless of the robot manufacturer, FESTO and SICK have created this content to be agnostic, which means it will align to the best practice of any robot manufacturer, allowing students to become adaptable contributors from day one on the job,” Rozier said.

ABB recently released a global survey showing that only one in four education establishments use robots in teaching programs despite the fact that 70% of US and European business plans to invest in robotics and automation in the next three years due to supply chain shifts. 

The Safety Awareness Bundle is set up in community colleges and universities across the country, and incumbent workers can sign up for the course to upskill their robotic knowledge base.