Robot and Cobot Safety Risks Standards and Control Measures for 2026

When Automation Creates New Risks

A worker enters a robot cell to clear a jam. Another employee assumes the robot has been safely stopped. However, stored energy, automatic restart, movement from connected machinery, or an incorrect operating mode creates unexpected exposure.

Similar situations can occur in manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, automotive production, food processing, pharmaceutical facilities, and other automated workplaces. They demonstrate why robot and cobot safety remains critical as organisations expand the use of industrial automation.

Robots can remove workers from repetitive, physically demanding, or dangerous activities. However, when automation is introduced without a complete understanding of its hazards, interfaces, operating modes, and safeguarding requirements, it can create new risks.

This guide explains the major robot and cobot hazards, applicable safety standards, risk-assessment steps, control measures, and responsibilities employers should understand in 2026.

Featured Answer: What Is Robot and Cobot Safety?

Robot and cobot safety is the process of identifying, assessing, reducing, and controlling risks created by robots, end-effectors, workpieces, control systems, connected machinery, energy sources, and human interaction throughout the machinery lifecycle.

The lifecycle may include:

• Design and integration
• Installation
• Commissioning
• Programming
• Normal production
• Cleaning
• Jam clearing
• Inspection
• Maintenance
• Modification
• Decommissioning

A collaborative robot, commonly called a cobot, is not automatically safe simply because it has built-in force, speed, or collision-limiting features.

The completed robot application must still be:

• Risk assessed
• Correctly integrated
• Appropriately safeguarded
• Validated
• Documented
• Operated by competent personnel
• Inspected and maintained

The required controls depend on the robot’s task, speed, payload, tooling, workpiece, environment, operating mode, human interaction, and applicable legal requirements.

Key principle: Collaborative capability does not equal automatic safety.

Industrial Robots vs Cobots: What Is the Safety Difference?

The term collaborative describes the robot application, task, workspace, and method of operation. It does not guarantee that every use of a collaborative robot is safe.

For example, a robot arm may include power-and-force-limiting capabilities, but the application may still be dangerous if it carries:

• A sharp tool
• A hot workpiece
• A welding torch
• A heavy payload
• A powered screwdriver
• A cutting device
• An unstable object
• A hazardous chemical

Human-robot collaboration safety and cobot workplace safety therefore require a complete assessment of the robot, tooling, workpiece, operating environment, and foreseeable human interaction.

What Are the Most Common Robot and Cobot Safety Risks?

Mechanical Movement Hazards

Robotic arms can create:

• Crushing hazards
• Trapping hazards
• Shearing hazards
• Impact hazards
• Pinch points
• Drawing-in hazards
• Struck-by risks

Workers may be struck, trapped, or crushed between the robot and:

• Fixed structures
• Guards
• Worktables
• Conveyors
• Other machinery
• Stored materials
• The floor
• The robot’s own components

Unexpected changes in robot path, direction, acceleration, or speed can expose personnel to serious injury.

Tooling and Workpiece Hazards

End-of-arm tooling can create risks beyond those associated with the robot arm itself.

Hazardous tooling may include:

• Welding equipment
• Cutting tools
• Sharp grippers
• Drills
• Powered screwdrivers
• Clamping devices
• Vacuum grippers
• Magnetic lifting devices
• Automatic tool changers

Hot, sharp, heavy, fragile, unstable, or poorly secured workpieces may fall, shift, break, or be ejected.

The risk assessment must therefore cover the entire robot application—not only the robot supplied by the manufacturer.

Unexpected Startup and Hazardous Energy

Robotic systems may contain electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, thermal, gravitational, or stored-energy hazards.

Unexpected motion can result from:

• Automatic restart
• Residual pressure
• Stored electrical energy
• Gravity
• Software commands
• Remote commands
• Sensor activation
• Control-system faults
• Incorrect operating modes
• Bypassed safeguards
• Incomplete energy isolation
• Movement from connected machinery

A stopped robot is not necessarily an isolated robot.

Hazardous-energy isolation procedures should cover the robot and all associated equipment capable of creating movement or releasing stored energy.

High-Exposure Tasks

Personnel may face increased exposure during:

• Teaching
• Programming
• Commissioning
• Setup
• Adjustment
• Jam clearing
• Troubleshooting
• Cleaning
• Inspection
• Repair
• Preventive maintenance
• Safeguard testing

These tasks often require workers to enter or approach the safeguarded space.

Enhanced controls may include reduced-speed modes, three-position enabling devices, controlled access, supervision, energy isolation, safe positioning, and task-specific procedures.

Safeguarding Defeats and Bypasses

Robot-related incidents may occur when workers or technicians:

• Defeat an interlock
• Bypass a light curtain
• Override a scanner
• Use an unauthorised operating mode
• Reset the system without checking the cell
• Enter through an uncontrolled access point
• Rely only on an emergency stop
• Continue working with a known safety fault

Safeguard bypasses must be controlled through design, access restrictions, authorisation, monitoring, procedures, and change-management systems.

Emerging Robot Safety Risks

Developing technologies create additional safety challenges, including:

• Autonomous mobile robots
• Industrial mobile robots
• Automated guided vehicles
• AI-enabled machinery
• Machine-learning systems
• Connected robot fleets
• Remote monitoring
• Cloud-connected controls
• Cybersecurity vulnerabilities
• Dynamic production layouts
• Human interaction with multiple robot systems

A cybersecurity weakness can become a physical safety risk when unauthorised or corrupted commands affect robot speed, position, operating mode, safety parameters, or connected machinery.

Risk assessments should therefore consider reasonably foreseeable digital failures and security-related effects where they could lead to physical harm.

Control principle: Hazard → Person exposed → Possible harm → Required control

Which Robot Safety Standards Apply in 2026?

Robot safety requirements depend on the country, industry, robot type, application, and contractual arrangements.

ISO 10218-1:2025 and ISO 10218-2:2025

The 2025 editions of ISO 10218 Parts 1 and 2 provide the principal international safety framework for industrial robots and industrial robot applications.

ISO 10218-1:2025 primarily addresses the inherently safe design, risk reduction measures, and information for use provided for industrial robots.

ISO 10218-2:2025 addresses the integration, commissioning, operation, maintenance, modification, and decommissioning of industrial robot applications and robot cells.

The official ISO robotics standards overview provides information on the current ISO 10218 standards and other robotics-related publications.

The distinction between the two parts is important:

• The robot manufacturer is responsible for the safety requirements applying to the robot as supplied.
• The integrator must assess and control risks created when the robot is combined with tooling, workpieces, guards, conveyors, controls, and other machinery.
• The employer must maintain safe workplace use, procedures, training, inspection, and maintenance.

Buying a robot designed according to ISO 10218-1 does not automatically make the completed robot cell compliant with ISO 10218-2 or applicable law.

ISO/TS 15066:2016

ISO/TS 15066:2016 provides supplementary safety guidance for collaborative industrial robot systems and their work environments.

It is particularly relevant to applications involving:

• Safety-rated monitored stops
• Hand guiding
• Speed and separation monitoring
• Power and force limiting
• Potential human-robot contact

The technical specification includes guidance relating to force and pressure where contact may occur. However, values should not be treated as universal permission for contact.

The integrator must consider:

• The body area that may be contacted
• Contact duration
• Transient or quasi-static contact
• Tool and workpiece geometry
• Crushing or trapping possibilities
• Robot speed
• Payload
• Effective mass
• Worker variation
• Foreseeable misuse

ISO lists ISO/TS 15066:2016 as current at the time of writing, although a replacement is under development.

ISO 12100: Machinery Risk Assessment

ISO 12100:2010 provides the general principles and methodology for machinery risk assessment and risk reduction.

Its risk-reduction hierarchy is fundamental to robot and cobot safety:

1. Eliminate or reduce risks through inherently safe design.
2. Use safeguarding and complementary protective measures.
3. Provide information for use regarding residual risks.

Warning signs, procedures, training, and personal protective equipment should not be used as substitutes for reasonably practicable design and safeguarding measures.

ISO 13849-1 and IEC 62061

ISO 13849-1:2023 and IEC 62061 address the design and reliability of safety-related control systems.

Relevant safety functions may include:

• Safe torque off
• Safe limited speed
• Safe position monitoring
• Safety-rated monitored stop
• Speed and separation monitoring
• Guard interlocking
• Guard locking
• Protective stopping
• Prevention of unexpected restart

The required performance of each safety function must be determined through risk assessment.

Installing a safety-rated component does not automatically make the complete safety function compliant. The entire function—including sensors, logic, wiring, software, actuators, fault response, and stopping performance—must be designed and validated.

ANSI/A3 R15.06-2025

ANSI/A3 R15.06-2025 is the current American national consensus framework for industrial robots and robot systems.

It is closely aligned with the ISO 10218 structure and addresses industrial robots, robot applications, robot cells, and safe use.

Organisations operating in the United States should determine how the standard relates to their equipment, contracts, accepted industry practices, and OSHA obligations.

OSHA Requirements for Robotic Systems

OSHA does not currently maintain one comprehensive regulation dedicated solely to the robotics industry.

Instead, employers may need to comply with relevant OSHA requirements covering matters such as:

• Machine guarding
• Control of hazardous energy
• Electrical safety
• Welding
• Personal protective equipment
• Walking-working surfaces
• Employee training
• General workplace hazards

The OSHA Robotics Safety and Health Topics page provides official hazard-recognition resources, applicable standards, and technical guidance for industrial robot systems.

Compliance with a voluntary robot safety standard does not automatically prove compliance with every applicable OSHA requirement. Similarly, following minimum legal requirements may not address every application-specific hazard.

EU Machinery Regulation 2023/1230

Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 entered into force in 2023 and will generally apply from 20 January 2027, replacing the EU Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC.

The Regulation addresses machinery-related matters including:

• Essential health and safety requirements
• Conformity assessment
• Technical documentation
• Instructions
• Digital documentation
• Safety-related software
• Substantial modification
• Artificial intelligence-related machinery risks
• Cybersecurity-related effects on safety

The official text of the EU Machinery Regulation 2023/1230 should be reviewed by manufacturers, integrators, importers, distributors, and employers involved with robotic machinery in the European market.

In 2026, organisations should identify which systems, documentation procedures, supplier arrangements, and conformity-assessment responsibilities may require updating before the Regulation becomes generally applicable.

How Do You Conduct a Robot or Cobot Risk Assessment?

Every industrial robot and collaborative robot application requires a risk assessment appropriate to the complete system.

Changing the tool, payload, speed, software, layout, operating mode, workpiece, or task may change the risk and require reassessment.

Step 1: Define the Application and Its Limits

Document:

• Intended use
• Reasonably foreseeable misuse
• Robot type and model
• Operating modes
• Maximum speed
• Maximum payload
• Reach
• Tooling
• Workpieces
• Cycle sequence
• Connected machinery
• Personnel who may interact with the system
• Environmental conditions
• Maintenance and cleaning requirements

The assessment should cover normal production and non-routine tasks.

Step 2: Identify Hazards Throughout the Lifecycle

Evaluate hazards during:

• Transport
• Assembly
• Installation
• Integration
• Commissioning
• Programming
• Setup
• Normal operation
• Fault recovery
• Jam clearing
• Cleaning
• Inspection
• Maintenance
• Modification
• Decommissioning

Hazard identification should include mechanical, electrical, thermal, ergonomic, noise, radiation, material, control-system, software, cybersecurity, and human-factor risks where relevant.

Step 3: Estimate and Evaluate Risk

Consider:

• Severity of possible harm
• Frequency and duration of exposure
• Probability of a hazardous event
• Possibility of avoiding or limiting harm
• Number of people exposed
• Worker competence
• Foreseeable human behaviour
• Speed and complexity of robot movement
• Reliability of existing controls

The assessment should be based on evidence, not assumptions that the robot or cobot is safe because of its product description.

Step 4: Apply Risk-Reduction Measures

Follow the machinery safety hierarchy:

1. Inherently safe design measures
2. Guards and protective devices
3. Complementary protective measures
4. Information for use
5. Training and administrative controls
6. Personal protective equipment where appropriate

Higher-level controls should be prioritised over procedures and warnings.

Step 5: Validate, Document and Review

Safety functions and protective measures must be validated to confirm that they achieve the required risk reduction.

Validation may include:

• Functional testing
• Stopping-time measurement
• Safety-distance calculations
• Fault testing
• Interlock testing
• Scanner-field verification
• Software verification
• Performance-level verification
• Force and pressure measurement
• Review of technical documentation

Repeat or review the assessment after:

• Tool changes
• Payload changes
• Software updates
• Layout modifications
• Production changes
• Safeguard modifications
• Safety-system faults
• Incidents
• Near misses
• Unexpected robot behaviour

Robot and Cobot Safety Control Measures

Inherently Safer System Design

Where reasonably practicable:

• Limit hazardous speed
• Limit force and power
• Reduce moving mass
• Reduce stored energy
• Restrict reach
• Remove sharp edges
• Eliminate accessible pinch points
• Use safer tooling
• Secure workpieces
• Design safe maintenance access
• Position equipment away from occupied areas
• Prevent unintended access behind or beneath machinery

Risks that can be eliminated through design should not be transferred unnecessarily to workers through procedures.

Guards and Presence-Sensing Safeguards

Possible safeguarding measures include:

• Fixed guards
• Interlocked guards
• Guard locking
• Safety light curtains
• Safety laser scanners
• Pressure-sensitive mats
• Pressure-sensitive edges
• Two-hand controls where appropriate
• Perimeter fencing
• Safe access doors
• Trapped-key systems

Safeguard selection must account for stopping time, approach speed, reach, bypass possibilities, environmental conditions, and the full robot movement envelope.

Controlled Access and Exclusion Zones

Access to robot cells should be limited to designated and controlled entry points.

Controls may include:

• Interlocked gates
• Guard locking
• Authorised-person access
• Reset controls positioned outside the hazardous area
• Full-cell visibility before restart
• Presence detection
• Warning systems
• Controlled restart procedures
• Escape and release measures

Opening a gate should initiate the required safe response, but stopping the robot does not necessarily isolate hazardous energy.

Safety-Related Control Functions

Relevant safety-related functions may include:

• Safe torque off
• Safe limited speed
• Safe limited position
• Safe direction
• Safe brake control
• Safety-rated monitored stop
• Speed and separation monitoring
• Power and force limiting
• Protective stop
• Guard interlocking
• Prevention of unexpected restart
• Three-position enabling device

Each function should have an identified safety requirement and be validated as part of the complete system.

Safety-Rated Monitored Stop

A safety-rated monitored stop may be used when a worker enters or shares a collaborative workspace while robot motion is stopped and monitored.

The function must prevent hazardous motion while the person is exposed and initiate an appropriate safe response if the monitored condition is lost.

Speed and Separation Monitoring

Speed and separation monitoring seeks to maintain sufficient distance between a person and the robot.

The system may reduce robot speed or stop movement as the worker approaches.

The required separation distance depends on factors including:

• Robot stopping time
• Protective-device response time
• Human approach speed
• Robot speed
• Position uncertainty
• Measurement uncertainty
• System latency

A laser scanner alone does not guarantee adequate separation unless the complete function has been correctly designed and validated.

Power and Force Limiting

Power-and-force-limiting applications restrict robot characteristics so that foreseeable contact does not create unacceptable risk.

The assessment must include:

• Contact location
• Force
• Pressure
• Speed
• Effective mass
• Tool shape
• Workpiece shape
• Trapping conditions
• Duration of contact

Power and force limiting may not be suitable where sharp tools, hot surfaces, heavy payloads, unstable workpieces, or crushing hazards are present.

Hazardous-Energy Isolation

A hazardous-energy isolation procedure should identify every energy source connected to the robot application.

Possible sources include:

• Electrical supplies
• Pneumatic pressure
• Hydraulic pressure
• Mechanical springs
• Gravity
• Flywheels
• Capacitors
• Thermal energy
• Connected conveyors
• Tooling
• Workpiece-positioning devices

Isolation procedures should include shutdown, disconnection, locking or securing, dissipation of stored energy, and verification of a zero-energy or otherwise safe condition.

In the United States, applicable lockout/tagout requirements must be followed.

Administrative Measures

Administrative controls may include:

• Robot-specific operating procedures
• Restricted access
• Authorisation systems
• Operator training
• Maintenance training
• Permit-to-work procedures
• Pre-start inspections
• Shift handovers
• Near-miss reporting
• Change management
• Safeguard-defeat controls
• Contractor controls
• Preventive maintenance
• Emergency procedures

Administrative controls support—but do not replace—safe design and engineered safeguards.

Important Warning

Emergency stops, collision detection, alarms, software limits, warning labels, and operator awareness are not substitutes for:

• Inherently safe machine design
• Proper safeguarding
• Safety-rated control functions
• Hazardous-energy isolation
• Competent integration
• Validation

An emergency stop is a complementary protective measure. It should not be treated as the primary method of preventing worker exposure.

Professionals responsible for machinery risk assessment, safeguarding, equipment inspection, and safe machinery operation can strengthen their knowledge through competence-based machinery and equipment safety training.

Who Is Responsible for Robot Safety?

Robot safety is a shared responsibility, but individual duties depend on the organisation’s role and applicable jurisdiction.

Robot Manufacturer

The manufacturer should address:

• Inherently safe robot design
• Robot-specific hazards
• Safety functions
• Operating limits
• Instructions
• Technical information
• Residual risks

System Integrator

The system integrator is responsible for matters such as:

• Complete application design
• Robot-cell risk assessment
• Safeguard selection
• Safety-function design
• System integration
• Validation
• Technical documentation
• Instructions for the completed application

The integrator must assess hazards created by combining the robot with tooling, workpieces, controls, guards, and connected machinery.

Employer or Robot User

The employer is responsible for maintaining a safe workplace through:

• Suitable equipment
• Safe operating procedures
• Employee training
• Competence management
• Inspection
• Maintenance
• Energy isolation
• Supervision
• Change management
• Incident investigation

Robot Operator

Operators should:

• Follow approved procedures
• Complete required checks
• Respect safeguards and exclusion zones
• Report defects
• Stop work when unsafe conditions develop
• Avoid unauthorised resets or bypasses

Maintenance Technician

Maintenance personnel should:

• Follow isolation procedures
• Verify safe energy conditions
• Use approved diagnostic modes
• Prevent unexpected restart
• Restore safeguards after work
• Report unresolved defects

HSE or EHS Professional

The safety professional may support or audit:

• Risk assessments
• Legal compliance
• Safeguarding
• Training
• Competence
• Inspections
• Incident investigations
• Documentation
• Change-management processes

Important principle: Buying a compliant robot does not automatically make the completed robot cell, production line, or collaborative application compliant.

Ten-Point Robot and Cobot Safety Checklist

Confirm that:

1. The risk assessment is complete and current.
2. Intended use and operating limits are documented.
3. Guards, scanners, and interlocks function correctly.
4. Safety distances and stopping performance have been verified.
5. Tools, workpieces, payloads, and connected machinery are included in the assessment.
6. Emergency and protective stopping functions are tested under the inspection and validation programme.
7. Hazardous-energy isolation procedures are available.
8. Operators, programmers, and maintenance technicians are trained and competent.
9. Safety-related control functions have been validated.
10. Modifications, incidents, faults, and near misses trigger formal review.

This checklist can support workplace inspection and audit activities. However, it does not replace a competent, application-specific risk assessment or safety-system validation.

Safer Automation Requires More Than a Safe Robot

Robots can reduce exposure to dangerous, repetitive, or physically demanding work. However, they can also introduce crushing, impact, trapping, tooling, energy, control-system, and human-interaction hazards.

Cobots are not automatically safe. Safety depends on the complete application, including:

• Risk assessment
• Safe integration
• Safeguarding
• Functional safety
• Validation
• Energy isolation
• Training
• Inspection
• Maintenance
• Change management

Organisations operating industrial robots or collaborative applications should review their systems against the 2025 editions of ISO 10218, applicable national requirements, and relevant industry standards.

Businesses placing robotic machinery on the EU market should also prepare for Regulation (EU) 2023/1230, which will generally apply from 20 January 2027.

Safe automation does not result from purchasing a safety-rated robot alone. It results from competent people designing, integrating, validating, operating, and maintaining the entire robot application throughout its lifecycle.Organisations and professionals seeking to develop practical machinery and equipment safety knowledge can explore the Machinery & Equipment course as part of a wider occupational safety development programme.