Safety Third: Autonomous Revolution

Hosted by Reynolds and Moore

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Jun 2026

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About the show

Welcome to our podcast dedicated to the intersection of innovation and safety. Join us as we engage with subject matter experts across various industries, exploring the pivotal query of ensuring safety innovation. We delve into conversations with safety industry experts to glean diverse perspectives, invaluable experiences, and groundbreaking concepts in the realm of safe innovation. Your host, Erik Reynolds, guides these discussions, offering a platform for insightful dialogue and strategic insights.

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58 recent

June 8, 202649 min

From a Blank Page: Writing the Rules for AI Safety with Jordan Punch

Jordan Punch, Senior Functional Safety Engineer at Reynolds and Moore, joins Erik Reynolds to talk about what it takes to write a safety standard for AI from scratch. As a voting member of ISO SC42 JWG4, the working group developing ISO/IEC TS 22440, Jordan has spent the past two years helping shape the first international standard for AI functional safety.They cover the committee draft process and the roughly 1,700 comments national bodies returned, each of which has to be answered before publication. They get into the difference between a technical report, a technical specification, and a full international standard, and what each means for certification.The conversation also gets into the publication timeline, why it could slip from early 2027 into later that year, and the one thing Jordan wants engineers and safety managers to take away as 22440 moves toward release.Want to understand ISO/IEC TS 22440 in more depth? Reynolds and Moore is hosting two upcoming events for you:ISO/IEC TS 22440: Inside the Standard, a 45-minute webinar with Jordan on June 30, 2026 at 10 AM CDT.Understanding ISO/IEC TS 22440, a two-day training in Boston on October 14–15, 2026.Register Today: www.reynolds-moore.com/eventsCheck out our work: www.reynolds-moore.com

May 25, 202656 min

One Year Later: Sensory Robotics & the Speed of Safety With Chris Edwards & Mark Gagas

Erik welcomes back Sensory Robotics' Chris Edwards, Founder and CEO, and Mark Gagas, COO, one year after their first appearance on Safety Third: Autonomous Revolution.In the year since their first appearance, Sensory Robotics completed verification and validation of the SR1 system under UL 1740 after 19 months of work, navigating standards that were not written for their technology. The system now includes an AI body tracking layer, with the data feeding into a new offering called SR Insight. The conversation covers the certification process, their go-to-market approach through system integrators, the DoD SBIR project they secured, and where humanoid robotics fits into the safety picture.More on Sensory Robotics: https://sensoryrobotics.comCheck out our work: https://reynolds-moore.com/Missed Chris and Mark's first episode? Listen here.

May 11, 202651 min

The Safety Functions That Don’t Exist Yet with Dr. Ricard Picas Prat

In this episode, Erik Reynolds talks with Dr. Ricard Picas Prat, Advanced Solution Engineer at Novanta Inc., about functional safety for dynamically stable robots. Ricard brings a background spanning academic research, hardware engineering, and years of leading SIL 3 and PL E functional safety certifications at what is now Novanta's servo drives division.They cover how classical safety functions like safe torque off and safe brake control work, and why those approaches fall apart for humanoids and quadrupeds. When a dynamically stable robot loses power, it doesn't stop safely. It falls.The conversation also gets into the challenge of writing a standard for technology that is still being invented. Ricard is doing that work firsthand as an active contributor to ISO TC 299 Working Group 12, while simultaneously building products for the market those standards will eventually govern.More on Novanta Inc: www.novanta.comCheck out our work: www.reynolds-moore.com

April 27, 20261 hr 12 min

How Reynolds & Moore Was Built: 10 years of Growth, Risk, & Functional Safety with Erik Reynolds & Missy (Moore) Reynolds

In honor of Reynolds & Moore's 10 year anniversary, co-founders Erik and Missy Reynolds sit down with producer Ginny Spellman to talk about how the company got built and how the functional safety industry has changed over that time.They cover the founding story, the culture Erik and Missy wanted to build from day one, and what it took to grow from a one-person consultancy to a global team. The conversation also gets into how the market for functional safety has shifted over the last decade, the role Missy is stepping into around developing and training Reynolds & Moore engineers, and where the company is headed in the next 10 years.If you are interested in becoming a living kidney donor, visit nkr.org/GRT523.Check out our work: www.reynolds-moore.com

April 13, 202653 min

The Final Frontier: Machine Learning Safety in Robotics With Paul Schmitt

Paul Schmitt, Director of Engineering at Reynolds & Moore, joins Erik Reynolds to explore what the safety community still has not solved: how robots decide what to do. Paul brings decades of experience across Ford, iRobot, and autonomous trucking to a conversation about the behavior layer in physical AI.They cover human-robot interaction research, including a study on how pedestrians actually respond to driverless vehicles, and why the answer had nothing to do with lights or sounds. Paul and Erik also dig into behavior hierarchies and the trolley problem applied to real robotics scenarios.The conversation also gets into why current machine learning safety standards still read more like guidelines than engineering requirements. Paul shares details on his work as a co-author of "The ML FMEA in Action: Lessons from Applications of Machine Learning Safety," documenting how the open-sourced ML FMEA framework connects machine learning development decisions to system-level safety outcomes, with applications across autonomous vehicles, humanoid robotics, and beyond.Read Paul's paper: The ML FMEA in Action: Lessons from Applications of Machine Learning SafetyCheck out our work: www.reynolds-moore.com

March 30, 20261 hr 5 min

What Certification Bodies See That Engineers Don't with Bodo Seifert

Bodo Seifert, Principal Automotive Functional Safety Engineer and Practice Lead at TÜV Rheinland, joins Erik Reynolds to share what certification bodies actually see when companies come in for assessment.They cover the organizational and technical red flags that assessors look for, and why good engineering practice and a formal safety case are not the same thing. Bodo draws on experience across automotive, robotics, and autonomous trucking to explain what separates companies that certify successfully from those that do not.The conversation also gets into the shift from deterministic functional safety to AI-enabled systems. Bodo explains what ISO/TR 5469 and ISO/IEC TS 22440 mean for teams building physical AI, and why transparency and explainability remain the hardest requirements for machine learning developers to accept. They also discuss why strategic collaborations like the one between Reynolds & Moore and TÜV Rheinland matter for companies navigating certification for the first time.Check out our work: www.reynolds-moore.com

March 16, 202650 min

Engineering Trust with Dr. Werner Kraus

In this episode of the Safety Third Podcast, Erik Reynolds speaks with Dr. Werner Krauss, head of the research division for automation and robotics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA), where he has spent 15 years bridging academic research and real-world industrial deployment.They cover the real engineering challenges behind deploying humanoid robots in industrial settings, drawing on Fraunhofer IPA's hands-on evaluation of the UNITREE G1 across safety, cybersecurity, clean room performance, and what those findings mean for trusting these platforms in the real world. Werner also shares what surprised his team most about these platforms, why end users are harder to design for than the robots themselves, and the incident from his own career that changed how Fraunhofer trains everyone who operates a robot. Read the Fraunhofer IPA's 3-part series on humanoid robots in industry.Check out our work: www.reynolds-moore.com

March 2, 202647 min

One Platform for Functional Safety with Josiah Rohne

Erik welcomes back Josiah Rohne, Staff Systems Engineer at Fennec Engineering, to discuss ASAP, Fennec's full-lifecycle functional safety platform, and the shift from fragmented tools to a single connected workflow. ASAP connects risk assessment, requirements, design, testing, and the safety case through shared traceability, while Fennec Engineering also develops dedicated test environments for safety validation, with the results feeding back into the platform to support certification.The conversation looks at scaling safety beyond a single owner, managing the impact of hardware and BOM changes, and why closing the gap between development and real-world validation is becoming critical. Josiah closes with a reflection on why the real measure of success in safety is often the incidents that never happen.Fennec Engineering is part of the R&M Safety Partner Ecosystem. Reynolds & Moore is hosting a 45-minute webinar in collaboration with Fennec Engineering, Modernizing Functional Safety: Building Your Safety Case Without Spreadsheets on March 31, 10:00 AM - 10:45 CST. Register here.Missed Josiah's first episode? Listen here.Check out our work: https://reynolds-moore.com/

February 16, 20261 hr 7 min

Scaling Safety Innovation with Cameron Gieda

Erik sits down with Cameron Gieda, Executive and Business Development leader at FORT Robotics, to discuss the commercial strategy required to move safety technology from lab prototypes to real-world deployment. They explore the stakeholder stack, explaining why the success of an innovation often depends more on aligning IT, finance, and operations than on the engineering itself.Cameron breaks down the massive economic disconnect between the $700 billion spent on insurance and liability versus the relatively small investment in preventive technology. The conversation also covers the rise of humanoid robotics and why collaborative partnerships like the R&M Safety Partner Ecosystem are essential for small companies to deliver enterprise-scale solutions. Cameron closes with a high-stakes story about an autonomous vehicle demo gone wrong that illustrates the thin line between breakthrough and disaster.More on FORT Robotics: https://www.fortrobotics.com/Check out our work: https://reynolds-moore.com/

February 2, 202648 min

Inside the AI Safety and Inspection Lab with Anita Dodia

In this episode of Safety Third: Autonomous Revolution, Erik talks with Anita Dodia, Laboratory Manager at RMAI, about how testing, inspection, and certification are evolving for AI-enabled safety systems. They explore why traditional functional safety standards struggle with black box AI models, and what it really means to validate systems that are probabilistic, non-transparent, and shaped by complex real-world environments.Anita explains how robustness testing, simulation, and physical validation can be used to define safe operating boundaries for physical AI. The conversation also touches on emerging standards like ISO/IEC TS 22440, along with the role of accreditation and collaboration across safety and standards community. They discuss why integrating safety into AI system design early on, rather than treating it as a late-stage requirement, determines whether autonomous systems can realistically be tested, validated, and certified.More on RMAI: www.safetycert.aiCheck out our work: www.reynolds-moore.com