The use of robotics in medicine was initiated several years ago and the problem of security in an environment where man is very far. The complexity of such systems and the transfer of responsibility of the surgeon to drive the robot designers to incorporate into their studies of the safety requirements of operation, including one of its key attributes: security. Although this discipline is widely studied in areas such as safety-critical avionics, the specificity of medical robotics leads us to reconsider the notion of risk associated with it. Starting from the undesired effect, damage, cause we go back to considering the concepts of hazard, risk and safety. This leads us to identify possible ways to manage the risk associated with the use of systems of medical robotics. The concepts introduced are illustrated by our experience from the development of a robotic tale-ultrasound system.

Industrial robotics, primarily dedicated to manufacturing processes, has recently used its technology arm robots for applications outside the factory. This “service robots”, and especially its component of advanced medical robotics, has greatly altered the security issues of robotic systems.

While security problems of industrial robots were mainly failures of protection (barriers, fences, etc…) And that did not penetrate the human operator workspace for maintenance or programming, service robotics needs to take into account the physical proximity and the close collaboration between the human and the robot. The urgent need to control security is more urgent than the functionality and autonomy of service robots are increasing.