Ampelmann

Ampelmann Safety Management System (ASMS)

The ASMS (Ampelmann Safety Management System) is the control management system that monitors and controls all system failures of the Ampelmann System during operation. Whereas the FMEA and HAZID studies have identified all critical components and their possible causes of failure and consequential risks, the ASMS is the real-time control-mechanism that continuously monitors all of these failure modes during operation and automatically controls all mitigation measures in order to maintain safe operation.

The Ampelmann system was developed according to a fail-operational reliability regime, implying that after any single component failure the operation must continue normally for at least 60 seconds. All non-structural critical components of the hexapod were thus designed to be redundant to comply with the fail-operational safety philosophy. This redundant set-up allows the system to ride through any component failure for at least 60 seconds. As soon as such a component fails, this failure is detected by the ASMS, which immediately takes mitigating measures: it isolates the failure and switches the system to the back-up component. In addition the operator is warned to finish the operation within one minute. This fail-operational system is proven through an extensive series of tests.