Robot safety at work is governed by consensus standards, not by AI-specific law. ISO 10218 Parts 1 and 2, the global industrial robot standard, were revised in February 2025, and the United States (ANSI/A3 R15.06-2025) and Canada (CSA Z434:2026, issued April 1, 2026) adopted it. Europe's Machinery Regulation, which replaces the old directive on January 20, 2027, is the next dated obligation, and a peer-reviewed analysis of federal records counted 41 robot-related worker deaths in the United States from 1992 to 2017.
Key takeaways
- The 2025 revision of ISO 10218 is the first major update since 2011 and folds collaborative robot requirements into the main standard.
- The United States adopted it as ANSI/A3 R15.06-2025 and added a user-focused Part 3 in January 2026. Canada adopted it as CSA Z434:2026, with Canadian deviations.
- The standard covers industrial robots only. Medical, service, and consumer robots are outside its scope.
- A study of 1992 to 2017 records counted 41 robot-related deaths. A 2026 study of Ohio workers' compensation claims for 2001 to 2020 found 1,076 robot-related claims, 85 percent of them medical-only.
- The sources reviewed do not say how ISO 10218 treats robots whose behavior is learned, so that question stays open.
Why safety is a useful place to measure robot impact
Talk about robots and society tends to leap to jobs or distant futures. Physical safety is narrower and easier to check. A robot arm is a heavy machine that moves under its own power, so the questions are concrete: who writes the safety rules, what do they require, and what do injury records show? Both the rules and the records are public enough to read. The topic also separates two ideas that often get merged. A robot is a machine whose motion is set by its operators. Artificial intelligence is software that can make a machine's decisions harder for its designers to predict. The standards discussed here were written for the first idea.
What the 2025 revision of ISO 10218 changed
ISO 10218 has two parts. Part 1 sets safety requirements for the robot itself and is aimed at manufacturers. Part 2 covers robot applications and robot cells, meaning how a robot is installed, operated, maintained, and decommissioned, and is aimed at system integrators. Both parts carry a 2025-02 edition date in the ISO listing quoted by DIN Media, as the third edition of Part 1 and the second edition of Part 2. No later revision turned up in searches run in October 2026.
The Association for Advancing Automation (A3), a trade group that helped draft the revision, lists these changes:
- Functional safety requirements are stated explicitly rather than implied.
- Requirements for collaborative robot applications are merged in from the separate technical specification ISO/TS 15066.
- Guidance on manual load and unload procedures and on end-effectors (the tools on the end of an arm) comes in from two earlier technical reports.
- New robot classifications carry matching functional safety requirements and test methods.
- Cybersecurity requirements that relate to robot safety are added.
A3 says Part 1 grew from 50 to 95 pages and Part 2 from 72 to 223 pages. The European edition of Part 1, EN ISO 10218-1:2025, excludes underwater, military, medical, healthcare, service, and consumer robots, so a hospital delivery robot or a home vacuum does not fall under it.
How the standard reaches Canada, the United States, and Europe
ISO standards are not law. Each country adopts them through a national body, and regulators decide separately whether to refer to them.
| Jurisdiction | Adopting document | Status found |
|---|---|---|
| United States | ANSI/A3 R15.06-2025 (Parts 1 and 2), plus R15.06-3-2025 | Parts 1 and 2 announced September 2025 and replace the 2012 edition; Part 3, written in the US for users of robot cells, reported available in January 2026 |
| Canada | CSA Z434:2026, "Industrial robots, robot applications, and robot cells" | Issued April 1, 2026 and listed as current; adopts both ISO parts with Canadian deviations |
| European Union | EN ISO 10218-1:2025 under Directive 2006/42/EC; Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 from January 20, 2027 | EN edition published May 19, 2025 and replaces the 2011 edition; the Regulation replaces the Directive on the date shown |
Whether a particular province, state, or federal rule requires compliance with these documents was not verified for this article. A workplace in Ontario, British Columbia, or Ohio should check its own regulator's current text. TÜV Rheinland, a certification body, says the EU Regulation adds new AI-related and cybersecurity requirements for machinery. Its page does not give the wording, and the Regulation's text was not read in full here.
What fatality and injury records show
Larry A. Layne searched restricted Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries data for 1992 to 2017 and identified 41 robot-related deaths over 26 years. His paper in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine (2023) reports that 85 percent of the workers were male and that the largest age group, 29 percent, was 35 to 44. Eighty-three percent of cases involved stationary robots, and 78 percent involved a robot striking the worker while operating under its own power. Forty-six percent occurred in the Midwest. Many of the striking incidents happened during robot maintenance.
Two cautions apply. The count came from keyword searches, and a case that never used a matching word in its description could be missed. The records also end in 2017, before the 2025 standards and before collaborative robots became common, so they describe the earlier generation of installations. The maintenance finding still matters for design: Part 2 of the standard treats maintenance as a life-cycle stage and not only normal production.
Newer evidence on injuries short of death comes from Ohio. A 2026 paper in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine by researchers at NIOSH and the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation reviewed claims from 2001 to 2020 and confirmed 1,076 as robot-related, about 54 a year. Of these, 85 percent were medical-only, 75 percent came from manufacturing, and contact with objects and equipment accounted for 58 percent. Total claims fell 51 percent over the period. The authors could not calculate rates because employee counts were unavailable, and they say the count is probably low because self-employed and self-insured workers are not covered. The data stop in 2020 and describe one state.
Where AI enters, and what is not known
The sources reviewed describe ISO 10218 in terms of functional safety, collaborative operation, end-effectors, classifications, and cybersecurity. None of the summaries examined mentions machine learning. The full standards are paid documents and could not be read for this article, so it is not established whether they say anything about robots that learn from data or choose actions with a trained model. A safety function that stops an arm when a person enters a zone can be tested directly. A decision made by a model whose behavior changes with new data is harder to test that way, which is a general engineering concern rather than a finding from these sources.
Standards work for newer robot types is under way separately. ISO lists a committee draft, ISO/CD 25785-1, for dynamically stable industrial mobile robots, a group that covers legged robots such as humanoids. It was not a published standard in the listings seen in October 2026, and no publication date has been confirmed.
Questions to ask about any robot deployment
- Which standard and edition does the supplier cite, and is it the 2025 revision or the older one?
- Is the machine an industrial robot as the standard defines it, or a service or consumer robot that falls outside it?
- Who performed the Part 2 integration work for the installed cell?
- How are maintenance and programming tasks protected, given that many striking incidents occurred then?
- If software that learns is involved, what testing is described for its safety functions?
FAQ
Are industrial robot standards legally required?
The standards themselves are consensus documents. A law or regulation can make them mandatory by referring to them, and the European edition is cited in the EU's machinery framework. Whether a given Canadian province or US state does the same was not verified here.
What changes in Europe in 2027?
Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 replaces the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC from January 20, 2027, according to TÜV Rheinland. Manufacturers selling machinery in the EU should check which harmonized standards will support the new rules.
Does ISO 10218 apply to home or hospital robots?
No. The European edition of Part 1 excludes service, consumer, medical, and healthcare robots, among others.
Did the 2025 revision add rules for artificial intelligence?
The published summaries list functional safety, collaborative operation, classifications, and cybersecurity. They do not describe AI-specific requirements, and the full text was not available for review.
Do the 41 deaths describe robot risk today?
Only partly. The study covers 1992 to 2017 and used keyword searches, so it is a record of an earlier period and may be incomplete. The 2026 Ohio claims study is newer but stops at 2020.
Related reading
- Evidence on AI and modern society
- Documented harms from AI systems
- The argument that AI is not a threat
- Where AI and robotics meet
More in AI Basics.
Last verified: October 2026
Sources
- Robot-related fatalities at work in the United States, 1992-2017, Layne LA, American Journal of Industrial Medicine 66(6), 2023
- Robot-related workers' compensation claims in Ohio, 2001-2020, Suresh et al., American Journal of Industrial Medicine 69(5), 2026
- Updated ISO 10218: Major Advancements in Industrial Robot Safety Standards Now Available, Association for Advancing Automation, February 17, 2025
- ANSI, A3 Publish Revised R15.06 Industrial Robot Safety Standard, Association for Advancing Automation, September 10, 2025
- Part 3 of ANSI/A3 R15.06-2025 Robot Safety Standard Now Available for Purchase, Industrial Safety and Hygiene News, January 20, 2026
- CSA Z434:2026-04-01, Industrial robots, robot applications, and robot cells, listing at DIN Media, 2026
- EN ISO 10218-1:2025, Robotics, Safety requirements, Part 1: Industrial robots, CEN/TC 310 listing, 2025
- New Machinery Regulation EU 2023/1230, TÜV Rheinland, 2026