Analysis of the Trends Towards Domain-Crossing Safety Standardization in Close Human-Robot Interaction

The paper shows the current ongoing trends and activities in robot safety standards development. Special attention is paid to the field of close human-robot Interaction. This is increasingly important since in nearly all sectors of robot applications collaborative operation without physical protective

devices between the user and the robot is targeted. Physical robot safety is thus a challenge arising in a large variety of robotic domains (e.g. industrial, service and assistance, mobile, medical, intralogistics, household, etc.). Nevertheless, in general, standardization committees are specifically implemented to develop, revise and maintain standards for specific application sectors. This is also the case in robot safety, and committee members are reflecting a group of experts in the associated

application field. However, there is a gratifying trend that domain experts start to collaborate with each other, share their experiences, and harmonize standards for safe human-robot collaboration applicable to various robot application domains. This work elaborates this trend by highlighting selected standards synergies on ISO, CEN, and the national level, analyzing future trends towards domain-crossing robot safety standards, and drawing implications for system integrators, and end-users

of collaborative robot applications as well as researchers driving future robot-system technologies.