ISO 13482 (Safety Requirements for Personal Care Robots)

An international safety standard for mobile service, wearable-assist, and person-carrying robots that operate in close proximity to people's daily lives.

Published in February 2014, ISO 13482 covers three categories of ground robots that operate close to people outside industrial and medical settings: mobile servant robots (e.g., delivery robots), physical assistant robots (e.g., wearable exoskeletons), and person carrier robots. It specifies inherently safe design, protective measures, and instructions for use, and it permits physical contact between a person and the robot. It doesn't apply to robots traveling faster than 20 km/h, toys, underwater or flying robots, industrial robots (covered by ISO 10218), medical devices, or military and police use; the standard also notes that at the time of publication there was no internationally agreed limit for collision pain or injury. According to the ISO website, a revision, ISO/FDIS 13482, has reached the final draft stage, retitled ‘Safety requirements for service robots’ and expanded in scope to cover both personal and professional/commercial service robots.

ExampleIn November 2014, Cyberdyne's lumbar-support exoskeletons HAL for Labor Support and HAL for Care Support received certification from Japan's Quality Assurance Organization (JQA) under ISO 13482:2014 — officially described as the world's first such certifications.

Also called

ISO 13482:2014, ISO/FDIS 13482, Safety Requirements for Service Robots

Related

Service Robot · Exoskeleton · ISO 10218-1/-2:2025 Robotics — Safety Requirements · Functional Safety · Physical Human-Robot Interaction · Embodied Safety

Sources

ISO 13482:2014 Robots and robotic devices — Safety requirements for personal care robots
ISO/FDIS 13482 Robotics — Safety requirements for service robots
CYBERDYNE: HAL received the world-first certificates of ISO 13482 (2014-11)

As of

2026-09