Safety Third: Autonomous Revolution

Hosted by Reynolds and Moore

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Aug 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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60 recent

August 24, 202648 min

The Race Between Standards and Technology with Chris Soranno

Chris Soranno, Manager of International Safety Standards at SICK Sensor Intelligence , joins Erik to take on a complaint the industry makes constantly, that safety standards are always behind the technology. Chris has spent 25 years inside that process. A technology has to prove it is not a passing trend before a committee will invest the effort, and by the time the first meeting happens, the market has already moved again. His argument is that a standard should say what has to be achieved, never how to achieve it. Chris points to the safety laser scanner, a proven technology that had nowhere to be applied because the application standards of the day named the light curtain as the only accepted answer. They also cover why risk assessment still holds up for machines whose behavior is harder to predict, why motion and contact are no longer treated as automatically hazardous, and what changes when the thing defeating your safeguard is an adversary rather than an accident. More on SICK Sensor Intelligence: https://www.sick.com/ Check out our work: https://reynolds-moore.com/

August 9, 202654 min

The New European Rulebook for Intelligent Machines with Lorenzo Nava

Erik talks with Lorenzo Nava, European Managing Director of Reynolds and Moore , about the new regulatory landscape facing intelligent machines in Europe. They look at how the Machinery Regulation, the Cyber Resilience Act, and the AI Act overlap, and what that means for manufacturers trying to bring AI-driven machinery to the European market. Lorenzo explains the shift from prescriptive standards toward more flexible, framework-based ones, and why defining a clear operational design domain matters when certifying complex systems like humanoids. They discuss the current state of machine learning certification, the standards still in development, and whether notified bodies are ready to sign off on these technologies. The conversation also covers market surveillance obligations across physical, cyber, and AI systems, and the tensions that arise when requirements to record events run up against European privacy rules. Check out our work: https://reynolds-moore.com

July 20, 202649 min

The Deliberate Path to Humanoid Safety with Kevin Reese

This week, Erik Reynolds talks with Kevin Reese, Distinguished Robotics Safety Engineer at Agility Robotics and project leader for ISO 25785-1, the first safety standard for dynamically stable industrial mobile robots. They discuss why classical machine safety assumptions break down for legged robots, where a standard stop can be the most hazardous event, and how the new DSIMR standard fits alongside existing robot and industrial truck standards. Kevin shares how Agility is expanding Digit's capabilities intentionally, starting with cooperative operation in industrial settings before taking on harder problems like collaborative work and unstructured environments. They also talk about the role of AI in safe human detection, what ISO/IEC TS 22440 means for using AI in safety functions, and what 65,000 operating hours across nine customer deployments has taught the team that the lab never could. Check out Agility Robotics: https://www.agilityrobotics.com/ Check out our work: https://reynolds-moore.com/

July 6, 20261 hr 9 min

Inside MassRobotics: Where Robots Get Real with Russell Nickerson

Erik Reynolds sits down with Russell Nickerson, Partnership Engagement Liaison at MassRobotics , the world's largest independent nonprofit robotics hub, and founder of Collabots , an entertainment robotics consultancy with clients including Cirque du Soleil. Russell shares what he sees every day working with startups, corporate partners, and academia: the gap between a robot that works in the lab and one that survives the real world. They dig into UX failures, E-stop recovery on a live stage, why demo day is when robots find new ways to fail, and the overlooked infrastructure problem nobody is talking about, the shortage of integrators and repair shops that can keep robots running long after deployment. They close on what separates the startups that reach deployment from the ones that don't, and why Russell believes the answer has less to do with the robot and more to do with the customer. Join Reynolds & Moore at MassRobotics in Boston this October: R&M Physical AI & Safety Summit, October 13, 1:00-5:00 PM EDT. Free to attend. Register here . Understanding ISO/IEC TS 22440: Artificial Intelligence – Functional Safety and AI Systems, a two-day in-person training in partnership with RMAI , October 14-15. Seats are limited. Register here . Check out MassRobotics: https://www.massrobotics.org/ Check out Collabots: https://collabots.net/ Check out our work: https://reynolds-moore.com

June 21, 20261 hr 5 min

The Virtual Operator with Phillip Hansel

Phillip Hansel , CEO and Co-founder of AIOps , joins Erik Reynolds to talk about what happens when reinforcement learning shows up on the factory floor. Phillip spent more than a decade as a control systems engineer in oil, gas, and chemical processing, and now builds AI for the same kind of plants he once worked in. They cover the virtual operator, an AI agent trained to run a process the way a seasoned human would. They get into why shaping that agent's behavior makes the modern controls engineer as much psychologist as engineer. The conversation also gets into the plants where these agents already run, a 20-year control problem one of them quietly solved, and why Phillip is adamant this technology exists to back up human operators rather than replace them. More on ⁠AIOps: https://ai-ops.com/ More on Reynolds & Moore: https://reynolds-moore.com/

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/events Check 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.com Check 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.com Check 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 Safety Check out our work: www.reynolds-moore.com