International Standards on robotics are prepared within the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Standards comprise safety, performance criteria, modularity, and vocabulary.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is the worldwide federation of national standards organizations. Standards concerning robots are prepared by ISO Technical Committee 299 with the title “Robotics”.

Safety standardization is a very important issue at ISO/TC 299. Safety standards have been developed for the industrial robotics sector (ISO 10218-1, ISO 10218-2, ISO/TS 15066) as well as for the non-industrial (service) robotics sector (ISO 13482). Other topics for robot standardization activities at ISO/TC 299 include: performance criteria, modularity, and vocabulary.

More information about ISO/TC 299 “Robotics” including a list of published standards as well as a list of standards under development can be found at the ISO webpage.

Robot definitions at ISO

IFR members use the definitions contained in the international standard ISO 8373 “Vocabulary” when compiling statistics of industrial robots in particular countries for example. Accordingly, an industrial robot is defined to be an “automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator, programmable in three or more axes, which can be either fixed in place or mobile for use in industrial automation applications.”

Please also refer to the more detailed definitions of industrial robots and service robots.