Roberta Nelson Shea, global technical compliance officer at Universal Robots, is the 2023 Joseph F. Engelberger Robotics Award winner for application. She and Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), will be recognized on May 24 in the Grand Ballroom of Detroit’s Huntington Place Convention Center, in conjunction with the Automate Show.
At Universal Robots, Nelson Shea is responsible for global product compliance and reducing barriers to acceptance of robots for collaborative applications. For more than 45 years, she has been one of the central figures in the development of industrial robot safety standards in North America and around the world. She has been instrumental in the standardization of the field of robotics. She convened the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/technical committee (TC) 299 WG3 for industrial safety standards and the ISO/TC 184/SC2 for automation systems and integration standards. Her work led to the introduction of ISO/technical specification (TS) 15066:2016, which, as an extension of the established ISO 10218:2011, is the first document defining standardized safety requirements within human-robot collaboration.
The Engelberger recipients were unanimously selected by the awards committee and past chairs of the former Robotic Industries Association (RIA), which merged with the Advancing Vision + Imaging Association (AIA) and the Motion Control & Motor Association (MCMA) in 2021. The resulting association, A3, administers the award, and each winner receives a $5,000 honorarium and commemorative medallion.
“I have been one of the leaders to push embracing risk assessment and global harmonization to reduce the costs and burdens to the entire robotic supply chain,” Nelson Shea said.
For more than 23 years, she’s served as chair of the committee that oversees the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)/RIA R15.06 industrial robots and robot systems safety requirements standard. She was also involved with the alliance agreement between the National Institute for Occupation Safety & Health (NIOSH), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and RIA.
Nelson Shea’s career in industrial safety has taught her perseverance. “I have preached that the most productive and ergonomic approach is to design such that the easy way to work is the safe way to work,” she said. “There was a great deal of resistance many years ago. I did not give up.”
It has been Nelson Shea’s pleasure to work in safety standards. “At times this work has been my greatest challenge,” she said. “The robotics industry should be proud of our safety standards and the resulting low incident rate. Due to the contributions of everyone—robot manufacturers, integrators and robot users—we have made robotics great for the market and the people associated with their use. Let’s celebrate all the ways that robotics improves the world.”
She said robotics touches many important issues, including infrastructure flexibility and the possibility of reuse of equipment. “This appeals to me from the perspective of sustainability,” she said. Robotics is helping with the labor shortage, and it offers more fulfilling and interesting work, over non-ergonomic or dangerous tasks. “I see these people becoming robot and automation programmers,” she added.
Nelsen Shea will be joined at the awards by Jeff Burnstein, president of A3 and the award winner for leadership. The awards are named after the late Joseph F. Engelberger, known as the founding force behind industrial robotics. Since their inception in 1977, the Engelberger Awards have been given to 136 robotics leaders from around the world for excellence in technology development, application, education and leadership.
The 2023 awards dinner will be held May 24 from 5:15 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom at the Huntington Place Convention Center in Detroit. Tickets for the event, which include the cocktail reception and dinner, may be purchased when registering for the Automate 2023 Show and Conference, May 22-25.
