A new set of experiments has been performed in the Elettric 80 demo site. They were conceived to show that the new SAFERUN planner preserves the high safety standards which are typical of the Elettric 80 plants.

In each experiment an obstacle was placed on a critical position along the vehicle trajectory. Practically, the positions were selected such that the available stop distances, i.e., the distances to the obstacle when this latter is detected, are minimal. In the tests, the SAFERUN planner was compared with the standard one, but the cruising speed assumed for this latter was increased in order to obtain the same time performances.

A typical test set is shown in the video that can be seen here: with the SAFERUN planner collisions are always avoided, while safety is lost if an augmented speed is used with the standard planner. This behavior has been verified for all the paths of the demo plant.

A second set of experiments was organized to determine if safe traveling conditions could be obtained even for the augmented-speed standard algorithm. Experiments have shown that safety can be recovered by increasing the size of the surface inspected by the safety laser scanners but, as can be evinced from this video, this causes false emergency stops which would worsen the productivity of real plants.

In conclusion, the SAFERUN planner allows reducing the trajectory execution times and maintaining high safety standards. The same efficiency can also be obtained with the standard algorithm by increasing the average traveling speed, but this would pose safety issues or, if safety areas are increased, it would give rise to false emergency stops.