Rethinking robotic safety: Why yesterday’s standards are inadequate for new robot architectures

Robotic safety standards were forged in an era dominated by fixed industrial arms, hard fences and worst-case assumptions. The robotics landscape has changed dramatically.

Robots learn new skills through foundational AI models, mobile platforms navigate dynamic environments and legged robots walk among us. Yet the safety frameworks that govern robotic deployment have not kept pace.

It is time for a fundamental rethink of robotic safety.

Robotic safety standards need an overhaul

At their core, today’s cornerstone standards, namely ISO 10218-1:2025 and ISO 10218-2:2025, focus on industrial robots and their integration into structured industrial applications, explicitly including robot cells as a primary organizing concept. Supplementary guidance, such as ISO/TS 15066:2016, addresses collaborative industrial robots, but it still assumes comparatively bounded operating modes and environments.

Amir Sharif, 3Laws founder & COO

This “cell” model reveals a deeper mismatch: programmable devices (robots) need “programmable infrastructure” (cages). Historically, we made infrastructure physical via fixed fences and static guarding, while the robot inside remained reprogrammable. That worked when robots were predictable and stationary. But in a world of dynamic autonomy and continuous re-tasking, fixed cages become the bottleneck. The only scalable alternative is a virtual, programmable cage, or a safety envelope that updates in software in real time. And that is only achievable with dynamic safety.

So where are the gaps?

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