Two functional safety standards decide whether a robot's stop is trustworthy, and both predate learned control

The document exists. The ledger fetched it at its publisher and quotes it.

Record ID

PAG-2026-0023

Kind

Standard

Jurisdiction

Global

Last verified

15 September 2026

Added

15 September 2026

• ISO 13849-1:2023 is edition 4, published 2023-04, 152 pages, from ISO technical committee 199, and covers the design and integration of safety related parts of control systems including software.
• ISO 13849-1 applies to high demand and continuous mode operation and does not apply to low demand mode, which it leaves to the IEC 61508 series.
• IEC 62061:2021 is edition 2.0, published 2021-03-22, 304 pages, from IEC technical committee 44, and a consolidated version with amendment 1 of 2024 exists.
• IEC 62061 states it is concerned only with functional safety requirements intended to reduce the risk of hazardous situations arising from the machine itself.

The machine, The AI inside it. Stated means the document you can open below says it; silent means the ledger read the document and it does not.

The machineStated

These two documents decide the performance level or safety integrity level of the emergency stop, the speed limit and the protective separation.ISO, ISO 13849-1:2023 Safety of machinery, Safety related parts of control systems, Part 1, primary source, 1 April 2023.

The AI inside itSilent

Both assume a specified function with a quantifiable failure rate, which is exactly what a learned policy does not give you.ISO, ISO 13849-1:2023 Safety of machinery, Safety related parts of control systems, Part 1, primary source, 1 April 2023.

The safe part of your robot has to be the part these standards can assess, which in practice means the learned behaviour proposes and a deterministic, rated safety channel disposes. Architect that split deliberately: a monitored speed and separation function built to a performance level is provable, and a claim that the model itself is safe is not.

1. ISO, ISO 13849-1:2023 Safety of machinery, Safety related parts of control systems, Part 1Primary · 1 April 2023
2. IEC, IEC 62061:2021 Safety of machinery, Functional safety of safety related control systemsPrimary · 22 March 2021

• VerifiedStandardPAG-2026-0019

  The world's industrial robot safety standard was reissued in 2025, in two parts, for the robot and for the cell

  Global · verified 15 September 2026

  ISO 10218-1:2025 is edition 3, published 2025-02, 95 pages, at stage 60.60, from ISO technical committee 299.

• Open questionOpen questionPAG-2026-0032

  Open question: how do you evidence a safety case for a controller that was learned rather than specified?

  Global · verified 15 September 2026

  ISO 13849-1 and IEC 62061 assume a specified safety function with quantifiable reliability in high or continuous demand mode.

• Open questionOpen questionPAG-2026-0029

  Open question: who is liable when a behaviour the robot learned causes the harm?

  Global · verified 15 September 2026

  The AI Liability Directive proposal, which would have eased proof for exactly this case, was withdrawn and published as withdrawn in the Official Journal on 6 October 2025.

• VerifiedStandardPAG-2026-0028

  No published safety standard covers a legged humanoid, and the one that would is still a committee draft

  Global · verified 15 September 2026

  The ISO TC 299 catalogue lists ISO/CD 25785-1, Robotics, Safety requirements for dynamically stable industrial mobile robots, Part 1: Robots, at stage 30.60.

• VerifiedStandardPAG-2026-0027

  The AI management system standard is the one certificate a robot maker can actually hold today

  Global · verified 15 September 2026

  ISO/IEC 42001:2023 is edition 1, published 2023-12, 51 pages, at stage 60.60, from ISO and IEC joint technical committee 1 subcommittee 42.

• VerifiedStandardPAG-2026-0026

  IEEE 7007 is an ontology for ethically driven robotics, and it is the only active standard of its kind

  Global · verified 15 September 2026

  IEEE lists IEEE 7007-2021 as an active standard: a set of ontologies with different abstraction levels containing concepts, definitions, axioms and use cases for ethically driven design.