Robotic Arm Safety Standards: What ISO 10218 and ISO/TS 15066 Mean for Your Facility

Robotic arm safety is governed by a two-layer standard framework that applies to virtually every industrial deployment worldwide. Understanding what these standards require — and when they apply — is a compliance obligation for any facility deploying robotic automation, and a practical guide to safe cell design.

ISO 10218: The Foundation Standard

ISO 10218, published in two parts, defines safety requirements for industrial robots (Part 1: the robot itself) and for robot systems and integration (Part 2: the installation). Part 2 is the working document for safety engineers and integrators, covering risk assessment methodology, safeguarding requirements for different hazard zones, emergency stop functions, and the verification and validation testing required before a robot cell can be commissioned for production.

The standard's core principle is risk reduction in the following hierarchy: inherent safe design, safeguarding (guards and safety devices), and information (warnings and instructions). Guarding options include hard barriers, pressure-sensitive safety mats, safety light curtains, and safety laser scanners — each appropriate for different access patterns and cycle requirements.

ISO/TS 15066: Collaborative Operations

ISO/TS 15066 extends the framework specifically to human-robot collaborative operations — the scenarios where the robot and a human operator share workspace simultaneously. It defines four collaboration modes and, critically, the biomechanical contact force and pressure limits that define the boundary between safe contact and injury risk.

These limits drive cobot speed restrictions: the robot must be slow enough that any contact event dissipates energy below the injury threshold for the relevant body region. The practical implication is that cobots operating in the speed range needed for high throughput are typically doing so in areas where the human has been removed, not in genuine collaborative mode.

Risk Assessment: The Project Deliverable

The legally relevant output of the safety standard framework is a documented risk assessment for the specific robot cell. This document identifies the hazards, assesses the severity and probability of harm, identifies the risk reduction measures applied, and records the residual risk after those measures are in place. In most jurisdictions, this document is required for CE marking (Europe) or as part of OSHA compliance documentation (US). Our engineering team produces this documentation as a standard project deliverable for every installation.