The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Geneva, has new guidelines to ensure the safety of human workers alongside collaborative robots or "cobots." ISO/TS 15066 has been published as a supplement to ISO 10218, "Safety Requirements for Industrial Robots."
ISO/TS 15066 guides the implementation of cobots for operating safely with humans, said Lasse Kieffer, global compliance officer with Universal Robots A/S, Odense, Denmark. Universal Robots was one of several cobot manufacturers to serve on the committee that drafted the guidelines, which describe various collaborative concepts and detail the requirements to achieve these. The last revision of the ISO 10218 that came out in 2011 focused on traditional industrial robots, he said. Cobots still were a new technology.
"We are pleased that the industry with the ISO/TS 15066 now has received additional published specifications to guide the implementation of cobots operating safely with humans," Kieffer said.
The technical specification is available at www.iso.org.
