Standardisation and safety

Standardisation is an important factor to pave the way onto the market for new and innovative robotic products and to foster market growth. Safety standards form the basis to establish a robotic product on the market and reduce legal risks for manufacturers. Other standards can help to dismantle trade barriers such as standards on terminology, coordinate systems, benchmarking and modular design. As the market for service robots constantly grows, the demand for standards in this area also constantly rises. Due to the large variety of service robot designs and application domains, existing and newly developed standards usually do not cover all service robots but are limited to certain environments and robot types. Different standardisation organisations have adopted different approaches to fill the existing gaps. As an effect, several new standardisation working groups have formed in ISO, but also in other standardisation organisations. These working groups are open to all interested stakeholders from industry, academia and general society including manufacturers, integrators and professional end users. This article gives an overview on current standardisation activities, especially with the aspect of safety, and points out possibilities to get involved in standard development.