Robot safety standards: which one applies to your robot

There is no single “robot safety standard”. There is a stack of them, and which ones apply depends on what kind of robot you have and where it works. This page maps the main ones.

How the stack is organized

Machinery safety standards come in three tiers. Knowing the tier tells you how a standard is meant to be used.

• Type A — basic principles. Apply to all machinery. ISO 12100 is the one that matters: it defines how to do a risk assessment.
• Type B — one safety aspect or one kind of safeguard. ISO 13849-1 and IEC 62061 cover how reliable a safety-related control system must be. Others cover emergency stops, safety distances, light curtains and so on.
• Type C — one kind of machine. These are the robot standards. Where a Type C standard is more specific than a Type A or B standard, the Type C requirement takes precedence.

The map

In the United States, the national version of ISO 10218 is ANSI/A3 R15.06, revised in 2025 on the basis of the new ISO edition. In Europe it is published as EN ISO 10218.

Industrial arms: ISO 10218

ISO 10218 is the center of gravity. It is split by who does the work:

• Part 1 is for the robot manufacturer. It covers what the robot must be capable of — protective stops, limits on speed, position and force, and the integrity of the control system behind them.
• Part 2 is for the integrator: whoever turns the robot into a working application. It covers layout, safeguarding, the end effector, operating modes, and validation of the finished cell.

Both parts were revised and published together in early 2025, the first major update since 2011. Four changes stand out.

• “Collaborative robot” is gone. The standard now speaks of a collaborative application, because collaboration is a property of the whole application, not of the arm.
• Collaborative requirements moved in. Part 2 now contains the requirements for collaborative applications that previously lived in a separate technical specification, ISO/TS 15066.
• Functional safety is specified per function. The 2011 edition’s blanket default of PL d is replaced by requirements for each safety function, and Part 1 introduces two robot classes: Class I for light, slow, low-force robots, which face reduced requirements, and Class II for everything else.
• Cybersecurity appears. Part 1 adds cybersecurity requirements where they affect safety.

Collaborative operation: what ISO/TS 15066 contributed

ISO/TS 15066, published in 2016, was the first document to say in detail how a robot may share space with a person. Its lasting contributions are two safeguarding methods:

• Speed and separation monitoring (SSM). Sensors track the distance between person and robot. The robot slows as the person approaches and stops before they can reach it.
• Power and force limiting (PFL). Contact is permitted, but force and pressure must stay below limits that depend on which part of the body could be hit.

Any robot driven by a learned policy that works near people will rely on one or both — implemented as safety-rated functions outside the model.

Mobile robots: ISO 3691-4 and R15.08

Mobile robots come from a different lineage: industrial trucks. ISO 3691-4 covers driverless industrial trucks and is the main reference for AGVs and AMRs in warehouses and factories. Its current edition dates from 2023. It leans heavily on preparing and defining operating zones and on detecting people in the vehicle’s path.

ANSI/A3 R15.08 (originally published as ANSI/RIA R15.08) is the US standard written specifically for industrial mobile robots. It comes in parts: Part 1 for the robot itself, Part 2 for integrating it into a system, and Part 3 for the user. It sorts robots into three types — Type A, a bare autonomous mobile platform; Type B, a platform with an attachment that is not a manipulator; and Type C, a mobile manipulator, where a robot arm rides on a mobile base and the hazards of both combine.

Service and personal-care robots: ISO 13482

Outside industrial settings — homes, hospitals, public spaces — the reference is ISO 13482. The 2014 edition covers three categories of personal-care robot: mobile servant robots, physical assistant robots (including exoskeletons) and person-carrier robots. It assumes the people nearby are untrained members of the public, which changes the risk assessment considerably. Medical robots are excluded and fall under medical device regulation instead.

A second edition is about to replace it. As of mid-November 2026 it had passed its final vote at ISO and was awaiting publication. It is retitled “Safety requirements for service robots” and widens the scope from personal care to service robots in both personal and professional or commercial use. If you are starting a service-robot project now, plan against the new edition.

Humanoids: the gap

A humanoid does not fit neatly anywhere. It is a mobile manipulator, but one that falls over when power is removed — and removing power is the basic safe state that most machinery safety assumes. ISO’s robotics committee, ISO/TC 299, is drafting ISO 25785-1 to address this. Its title deliberately avoids the word “humanoid”: it covers industrial mobile robots with actively controlled stability, whether they move on legs, wheels or anything else. Until it is published, a humanoid deployment has to be argued from the existing standards and a thorough risk assessment, usually with people kept at a distance.

The laws behind the standards

Standards describe how. Laws say that you must.

European Union. The Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC is replaced by the Machinery Regulation (EU) 2023/1230, which applies from January 20, 2027. Three of its changes matter for AI-driven robots:

• Safety components, and machinery with embedded systems, that use machine learning with fully or partially self-evolving behavior to perform safety functions are on the list of products that need third-party conformity assessment.
• The essential requirements for control systems now address self-evolving behavior and varying levels of autonomy.
• A new requirement covers protection against corruption — in effect, cybersecurity where it affects safety.

Industry associations have asked the European Commission to delay the cybersecurity-related requirements. As of this writing that is a request, not law, and the January 20, 2027 date stands.

The AI Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, originally treated AI used as a safety component of machinery as high-risk. That changed in 2026. The Digital Omnibus on AI, an amending regulation agreed in May 2026, postponed the high-risk obligations — to December 2, 2027 for stand-alone systems and August 2, 2028 for AI embedded in regulated products — and, according to legal commentary on the final text, moved machinery into the part of the Act where most of its obligations do not apply directly. AI-specific safety requirements for machinery are instead to be set under the Machinery Regulation. For a robot builder the practical reading is that the Machinery Regulation, not the AI Act, is now the main route for AI in machinery in the EU. This is recent and still being interpreted: read the amended legal text before relying on it.

United States. There is no federal robot-specific regulation. OSHA enforces workplace safety through general requirements and refers to consensus standards such as R15.06 and R15.08.

Regulatory dates and details in this area move — two of the facts on this page changed during 2026. Check the legal text and current official guidance before relying on any summary, including this one.

Where to start

1. Identify your robot type in the table above and obtain the primary standard.
2. Run the risk assessment that every one of them requires.
3. Determine the performance level each safety function needs, using ISO 13849-1.
4. Check which laws apply where the robot will be sold and used.