SAP is expanding its collaboration with UnternehmerTUM (UTUM), Europe’s leading centre for entrepreneurship and innovation based at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). One of the latest outcomes of this collaboration is SafetyGuard, a prototype for automated safety inspections that combines artificial intelligence and robotics to detect workplace hazards and help companies comply with safety standards.

SafetyGuard was created as part of a program at UTUM’s Digital Product School, where teams of selected students work on real-world challenges in just 12 weeks. A student team, “MIDAS,” and SAP Research & Innovation. This project illustrates just how effective cross-location collaboration with the ecosystem can be in rapidly creating prototypes as a foundation for product development at SAP.

The objective of this particular prototyping project was to identify use cases in which robotics and AI could be seamlessly integrated into business processes. Based on its research and on user studies, team MIDAS pinpointed the reliable detection and documentation of safety risks as one such use case.

Safety inspections are essential in many industries, but they are often time-consuming and error-prone. SafetyGuard could change that: leveraging embodied AI, it makes inspections faster, more efficient, and more reliable, without increasing the workload for employees.

Embodied AI, the integration of artificial intelligence into physical robot systems, will be a focal point of investment and development work at SAP going forward.

SafetyGuard combines two technologies: modular robotics and AI-powered autonomy. In this prototype, robots, such as drones and humanoid systems capable of inspecting work environments without human intervention, are equipped with a specialised AI model that is trained, for example, to detect where protective equipment is missing and to automatically document safety-related incidents. What’s more, the robots can multitask. While they are carrying out inspections, they can transport materials and monitor machinery, an approach that combines efficiency gains with increased safety levels.

“SafetyGuard demonstrates just how effective our ecosystem approach is. In this project, an SAP team in Potsdam and a group of students in Munich joined forces and very quickly built a prototype that will have a real impact on product development,” Tobias Riasanow, head of Ecosystem Development at SAP Labs Germany, says. “It’s the perfect example of what SAP understands by ‘ecosystem development.’”