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ISO STANDARDS FOR SERVICE ROBOTS

Conference Paper · August 2008

DOI: 10.1142/9789812835772_0016

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 ISO STANDARDS FOR SERVICE ROBOTS

G. S. VIRK
CLAWAR Ltd, UK & School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Massey
University, Wellington, New Zealand

S. MOON
Department of Computer Engineering, Sejong University, Korea

R. GELIN
CEA LIST, France

This paper presents an overview of the latest robot standardization activities being carried
out under ISO TC184/SC2 to address changes in the robotics sector. Several new
activities have been initiated recently to address the emerging emphasis of service robots
and the shift away from manufacturing robots in industrial sectors. The emphasis of
increasing human-robot collaborations appears to be a key requirement that needs to be
satisfied to allow safe service robots to be developed and supplied to the community; the
growing human-robot interactions is present even within manufacturing robots in
industrial environments where collaborative robots are being proposed. The paper reports
on the generic issues that are emerging and need to be addressed to allow the robotic
community to move forward collectively and the need for revising the robot vocabulary
for the new applications. Formulating a safety standard for the new service robots is
essential so that close human-robot interactions may be permitted. In fact the issues that
need to be specified for safe human-robot contact are being formulated for personal care
robots covering both non-invasive and invasive applications.

1. Introduction
Commercialisation of robotic systems is changing from developing
manufacturing robots for restricted industrial environments to producing service
robots for a wide range of applications and environments. The traditional robot
industry is still focussed on manufacturing applications and does not have staff
able to formulate the specifications for the new service robots as the concepts
are rather novel and focussed more at research than at product development. It is
therefore important to engage the robot research community as this new sector
of robotic applications is developed and supported to grow. It is clear that as this
new sector develops new robot standardization issues will emerge and they will
need to be addressed if the new area of service robots is properly supported.
However getting robots out of the factory and into our homes and work places to
provide the “service” is not a trivial task. Current robots are “industrial
machines” designed to be used while keeping a safe distance from humans. In
addition they require skilled staff to operate them using complex interfaces.
The emergence of new service robots has been noticed by many
organisations throughout the world and steps have been taken to support the new
developments. International robot standardization has traditionally been the
responsibility of ISO (International Organization for Standardization, see
www.iso.org) under TC184/ SC2. Until 2006 these ISO robot standardization
activities focussed on robots in industrial environments; this was reflected in the
title for sub-committee 2 (SC2) which was “Robots in industrial environments”.
In 2006 the title of SC2 was changed to “Robots and robotic devices” to remove
the focus on industrial environments. The new scope for SC2 is “Standardization
in the field of automatically controlled, reprogrammable, manipulating robots
and robotic devices, programmable in more than one axis and either fixed in
place or mobile. (Excluded: toys and military applications)”. In making this
change in title and scope, new ISO robot standardization activities have been
proposed as reported in Virk (2007); these include the setting up of the
following groups:
• An Advisory Group (AG1) on Service robots (Chair: Prof S Moon)
• A Project Team (PT2) on Robots in personal care (Chair: Prof GS Virk)
• A Project Team (PT3) on Vocabulary on robots and robotic devices (Chair:
R Gelin)
The activities of these groups is presented to disseminate the progress of the
standardization work so that the robot community can be properly engaged in
these important developments to widen the application base of robots and
robotic devices. The groups includes robot experts from Japan, South Korea,
UK, USA, France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden and Switzerland.

2. Advisory Group on service robots

AG1 has been tasked to generically investigate the new emerging developments
in service robotics and make proposals for new project teams to perform the
detailed developments for the standardization issues. The group has already
proposed the setting up of the two project teams PT2 and PT3 on safety standard
for robots in personal care and an update to the vocabulary needed for robots
and robotic devices respectively. The work of these new projects teams is
discussed in sections 3 and 4 but the main issues that are being looked at
currently within AG1 are as follows:
• Roadmap for standardization for service robots: the participating countries
are formulating their national roadmaps and these will be used to determine
the overall international ISO roadmap for the requirements of service robot
standardization; the roadmap should consider commercial urgency versus
time frame.
• Ethical issues in robotics are felt to be becoming for service robots. Euron,
Japan and South Korea are also investigating robot ethics issues.
• Farm animal handling robots have been raised to consider the robot-animal
interface. Although robot-animal interfaces will have some similarities
between the robot-human interfaces being explored within PT2, the robot-
animal interfaces are distinct from HRI (Human Robot Interface) in terms
of standardization and further investigations are felt to be required.
• Performance of service robots may be the next new project team proposed
so that the new robots will have defined standards for their performances.
This relates to having to formalize definitions and standards for complex
variables such as cleaning, assisting and caring.
• Robot modularity is likely to be the basis of how the new service robots
will be realized and hence robot component standards will be needed to
provide effective connectivity for the different devices at all levels.

3. Robots in personal care

The key requirement for the new service robots is that close human-robot
interactions can be permitted in a safe and acceptable way. To allow this the
safety standard for robots in personal care is needed. This is quite different from
the industrial robots that currently exist where robots and human have to remain
largely separated. The new work areas include medical and healthcare robot
applications and is being performed within project team PT2. The work to date
is indicating that the new ISO standard will be in two parts, with Part 1 focusing
at non-invasive robots and Part 2 aimed at invasive robots. The non-invasive
personal care robots have been classified into the following groups:
• Medical robots: this includes all personal care robots (non-invasive and
invasive) for monitoring and treatment of persons for achieving and
maintaining good health and providing good healthcare
• Mobile servant robots (with/ without manipulator): This group covers
personal care robots that need to move in their environment and/or perform
specific service tasks of manipulation and gripping. Including the provision
of a “zero level PC service”:
• Physical assistance supplementation robots (including rehabilitation):
These robots assist a person to perform required tasks to provide
supplementation capabilities (to bring the functionalities of a disabled/
injured/ elderly person to what can be performed by a “normal” person)
• Physical assistance augmentation robots: These robots assist a person to
perform tasks exceeding normal human physical capabilities
• Personal care robotic devices: parts of a personal care robot or simple
mechanisms.
The classification of the safety issues for personal care robots has been
carried out on the basis of the normal operational distance between the robot and
human. The “closeness” has been classified into the groups of 1) far, 2) close
(non-contacting), 3) contacting (intermittent), 4) contacting (continuous), and 5)
invasive. However the key difference from a safety viewpoint in these is
whether the application is non-invasive or invasive. In view of this, as already
stated, the PT2 safety standard is likely to be formulated in two parts, viz
• Part 1: Non-invasive personal care robots (including healthcare). Most of
the work within PT2 has focused on this part and the standard is currently
being produced. The scope of the Part 1 has been agreed to be as follows:
This international standard specifies requirements and guidelines for the
inherent safe design, protective measures and information for use of non-
invasive personal care, including healthcare robots, as defined in Clause x.
It describes hazards associated with the use of these robots and provides
requirements to eliminate, or adequately reduce, the risks associated with
these hazards. The standard includes risk assessment and risk elimination/
reduction information. The standard includes human-robot physical contact
applications. This standard does not apply to robots for industrial
environments to which ISO 10218 is applicable. This standard does not
apply to entertainment applications although the safety principles
established may be utilized for these applications.
• Part 2: Invasive personal care robots (including healthcare). The work for
the Part 2 has recently commenced. It is imperative that the work has
significant involvement from the medical community and for this a Special
ISO Workshop on Service robots in surgery and medicine has been
organized within CARS 2008 (Computer assisted radiology and surgery),
25-28 June 2008, Barcelona, Spain, www.cars-int.org.
Discussions are also underway between ISO and IEC to consider
establishing joint working groups who are able to develop the standards that are
needed.

4. Vocabulary on robots and robotic devices

There are a number of standards that must be complied with [3]-[9] but they
only apply to “industrial robots” as defined by ISO. The current definition of an
industrial robot, from ISO 8373(1994) [8]) is: “ An industrial robot is an
automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator,
programmable in three or more axes which may be either fixed in place or
mobile for use in industrial automation applications.” It is clear that this
definition is outdated and many new robot systems have not been considered
from the viewpoint of ISO standards. Hence new definitions are needed to make
them more relevant to current utilization. Some of the key definitions have been
formulated and they are presented next.
• Robot: Reprogrammable or autonomous mechanical system moving in its
environment, programmable in more than one axis.
• Robotic device: Mechanism moving in its environment, programmable in
one axis, with a degree of autonomy.
• Industrial Robot: A robot for use in industrial automation applications.
Examples:
o Manipulators for welding, painting, cutting, assembling…
o Mobile bases in industrial automation applications
o Mobile Manipulators in industrial automation applications
o Assistive robots in industrial automation applications
• Service Robot: A robot provides service excluding manufacturing robots
• Service: Provision of usefulness for well being of humans, society and
equipment. Examples:
o Domestic robotised assistant (home, hospital, public places)
o Cleaning, mauling, moving, guiding, carrying, fetching
o Rehabilitation robot, Orthosis (exo-skeleton), Prosthesis
o Surgery robot (mini-invasive robot, gesture assistant), etc

5. Conclusions
The paper has described the latest results obtained within the ISO work groups
that have been set up to formulate the new service robot standards. This is an
active area currently and new applications of robots are emerging rapidly (within
the research sector as well as new robot products). Normally standardization
work is carried out by the manufacturing sector but in this case, the new service
robot industry is not sufficiently developed to assist fully in the development of
the new standards and hence it is important that the research community engages
in the ISO activities described here. It is vital that the new standards needed are
developed in a timely manner after detailed discussions involving all the
stakeholders so that sound and acceptable standards will be produced to support
the growing robot sector.

6. References
[1] Virk GS, New standards for new robots, Proceedings 10th International
Conference on Climbing and Walking Robotics (CLAWAR 2007), pp
698-707, Singapore, 16-18 July (2007).
[2] ISO 10218-1:2006, Robots for industrial environments – safety
requirements – Part 1: Robot, 34 pages, (2006).
 [3] ISO 12100-1:2003, Safety of machinery — Basic concepts, general
principles for design — Part 1: Basic terminology, methodology.
[4] ISO 12100-2:2003, Safety of machinery — Basic concepts, general
principles for design — Part 2: Technical principles.
[5] ISO 13849-1:1999, Safety of machinery — Safety-related parts of
control systems — Part 1: General principles for design (EN 954-1
1996).
[6] ISO 13855, Safety of machinery — Positioning of protective
equipment with respect to the approach speeds of parts of the human
body.
[7] IEC 60204-1:2005, Safety of machinery — Electrical equipment of
machines — Part 1: General requirements.
[8] ISO 8373 1994, Manipulating industrial robots — Vocabulary (EN/ISO
8373 1996).
[9] ISO 13855:2002, Safety of machinery – Positioning of protective
equipment with respect to the approach speeds of parts of the human
body, (2002).

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