Standards Reshape Robot Safety

The ISO 10218-1:2025 and ISO 10218-2:2025 standards, which took effect in 2025, consolidate previously separate safety rules for collaborative and industrial robots into a single framework. The combined standard discourages the term "collaborative robot" in favor of "collaborative application," reflecting the principle that limited force and power alone do not make a robot safe to work alongside humans — the full application, from workpiece and robot to safety systems and environment, must be assessed. TechPoint Editor Julia Hider observed real consequences at Automate 2026: New sensing technologies are making industrial robots safe for human collaboration, while software is making them as easy to program as cobots, effectively blurring the product category line.

The Bottom Line: Shops specifying robots for new cells should verify that integrators are designing to ISO 10218:2025 application-level safety assessment, not just legacy cobot safety assumptions, to avoid future compliance gaps.

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