When I worked in engineering, one of my employers had a fenced robotic cell, including a small forge to make tuning assemblies and cavities for commercial radio equipment. The main purpose of the fence was to keep employees away from dangerous heat and molten metal while the robot moved work pieces in and out of the forge.
Retorts present their own unique worker safety issues—especially the retorts that require manual loading, which involves moving one-ton or heavier metal baskets in and out of long, dark, hot, and slippery cylindrically-shaped pressure cookers. You can’t fence a retort like the robotic cell I described. What, then, is a good safety solution for keeping workers out of harm’s way, yet still allowing for efficient loading and unloading?