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Open question: is a humanoid in a home a machine, a consumer product or a care robot?

Three regimes could claim the same machine. The Machinery Regulation treats it as machinery, the General Product Safety Regulation catches consumer products where no sectoral law covers the risk, and ISO 13482 was written for personal care robots and is marked for revision. No authority has said which governs a general purpose humanoid at home.

The verdict

Open question

No settled answer exists. The ledger poses the question, links the live debate, and does not answer it.

Key facts

What the sources say

Record ID
PAG-2026-0030
Kind
Open question
Jurisdiction
European Union
Last verified
Added
  • The General Product Safety Regulation applies only where no specific Union law with the same objective regulates the safety of the product, and only to risks those rules do not cover.
  • The Machinery Regulation applies to machinery and related products and carries the third party route for self evolving safety functions.
  • ISO 13482:2014 covers personal care robots and states that no internationally recognised impact injury limits existed at publication.

What it changes

For a robot maker or a deployer

Until somebody rules, assume all three apply and build to the strictest reading: machinery conformity, consumer product safety including a working recall path, and a contact safety case with your own measured data. A maker who picks the most convenient regime and is later told to pick another has to rebuild the file after the product is in people's houses.

Sources

What this record was verified against

  1. EUR-Lex, Regulation (EU) 2023/988 on general product safetyPrimary · 23 May 2023
  2. ISO, ISO 13482:2014 Safety requirements for personal care robotsPrimary · 1 February 2014

Related

Records that sit beside this one

Cite this record

Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, with attribution. The record ID PAG-2026-0030 is permanent and is never reused.

In a sentence
According to the GAGE Physical AI Governance Atlas (as of 15 September 2026), open question: is a humanoid in a home a machine, a consumer product or a care robot?.
APA
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). (2026). Open question: is a humanoid in a home a machine, a consumer product or a care robot?. Physical AI Governance Atlas. Retrieved 15 September 2026, from https://www.gage.academy/tools/physical-ai-governance-atlas/records/PAG-2026-0030-question-humanoid-in-a-home
MLA
"Open question: is a humanoid in a home a machine, a consumer product or a care robot?." Physical AI Governance Atlas, GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education), 15 September 2026, https://www.gage.academy/tools/physical-ai-governance-atlas/records/PAG-2026-0030-question-humanoid-in-a-home.
Chicago
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). "Open question: is a humanoid in a home a machine, a consumer product or a care robot?." Physical AI Governance Atlas. Last modified 15 September 2026. https://www.gage.academy/tools/physical-ai-governance-atlas/records/PAG-2026-0030-question-humanoid-in-a-home.
Permalink
https://www.gage.academy/tools/physical-ai-governance-atlas/records/PAG-2026-0030-question-humanoid-in-a-home

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