Functional Safety and SOTIF
exida provides its experience to contribute to the success of its Customers Functional Safety (FuSa) initiatives even considering, if required, the Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF) aspects.
What is FuSa
FuSa is the area of a system or equipment (including hardware and software) that guarantees that the entire system/equipment is free from defects, or implements automatic protections in response to predictable system failures to avoid that the system leads, by failing, to unacceptable and predictable risks of physical injuries or damages to people´s health.
The objective of FuSa is to make a system free from unacceptable and predictable risks, preventing the system from causing, in case of failures, physical injuries or damages to people´s health, by:- Implementing automatic protection functions (Safety Functions / Safety Mechanisms) that will properly handle any critical situation derived from human errors, hardware failures and operational or environmental conditions, moving the system to a safe state.
- Introducing preventive process measures (such as reviews, safety analyses, etc…) to reduce or eliminate the probability of defects in the product.
What is SOTIF
SOTIF stands for Safety of the Intended Functionality. The subject is the same of FuSa, the protection of humans from harm and injuries, but while the objective of FuSa is to avoid unreasonable risks derived from hazards caused by a malfunctioning of a system, SOTIF´s objective is to avoid unreasonable risks due to potentially hazardous behaviors related to functional insufficiencies or deficiencies.
The needs to cover this specific aspect of safety arose in the Automotive field in relation to the development of self-driving cars. But, considering that the self-driving cars – able in the near future, to drive without any human involvement - are a product located within the intersection of Automotive and Robotics areas, it is not to be excluded that SOTIF will apply, maybe with some adjustments, to the Robotics as well.