Humanoid Robot Safety: Questions to Ask Before Deployment

A humanoid robot brings hazards that fenced industrial arms never had: it walks among people, it can fall, it may carry loads at chest height, and it is covered in cameras. The safety standards are catching up, but some of the most relevant work is still in draft. That puts more of the burden on the buyer or site owner to ask sharp questions before a robot arrives. This guide lists those questions and the standards behind them. It is general information, not safety certification advice; a qualified safety professional should assess any real deployment.

The standards that apply, and the ones still being written

Start by knowing which documents a vendor might cite, and what each one does and does not cover.

• ISO 10218-1 and ISO 10218-2 (2025 editions). These are the core international standards for industrial robots. Part 1 is aimed at robot manufacturers and Part 2 at the integrators who build robot applications and cells. The 2025 revision folded in the collaborative robot requirements that used to live in the separate ISO/TS 15066, clarified functional safety requirements, and added cybersecurity requirements to the extent they affect robot safety.
• ISO/TS 15066 (2016). The technical specification that set out methods for robots working alongside people, including power and force limiting. Its content now sits inside the ISO 10218 series, so expect newer documents to cite ISO 10218-2:2025 instead.
• ISO 13482:2014. Safety requirements for personal care robots, including mobile servant robots that travel around to handle objects or exchange information with people. It excludes industrial robots. As of September 2026, ISO lists a replacement, ISO/FDIS 13482, "Robotics: Safety requirements for service robots," at the final draft stage, the last step before publication. Its scope widens from personal care to service robots in personal and professional or commercial use, and it still excludes industrial and medical robots.
• ISO 25785-1 (in development). An ISO standard being written specifically for robots that must actively balance to stay upright. Its full title covers "dynamically stable industrial mobile robots (legged, wheeled, or other forms of locomotion)." As of September 2026, ISO lists it as ISO/CD 25785-1, a committee draft, two stages short of a final draft and not a published standard. The draft defines an industrial environment as a workplace where the public is excluded or restricted, so it will not settle questions about robots in homes, shops or other public spaces.

Questions to ask the vendor:

• Which standards does the robot conform to, clause by clause, and which ones does it not?
• Was conformance assessed by an independent body, or is it the vendor's own declaration?
• Does the claim cover the robot alone, or the robot doing your task in your space?

That last question matters because a standards-conforming robot can still be used in an unsafe way. Integrators and site owners own the safety of the application.

Start with a risk assessment of your site, not the robot

A risk assessment lists every task the robot will do, every person who could be nearby (workers, visitors, contractors, cleaners on the night shift), and every way each task could hurt someone. It then ranks those risks and records how each one is reduced. The robot's specification sheet is only one input.

Questions to ask yourself and your integrator:

• Which areas will the robot work in, and are any of them open to the public or to untrained staff?
• What is the heaviest object it will carry, and at what height?
• What happens at shift change, during cleaning, and when a delivery arrives unexpectedly?
• Who is responsible for redoing the assessment when the task, the layout or the robot's software changes?

Falls: the hazard that is new

A conventional industrial robot is bolted down. A wheeled cart robot stops in place when it loses power. A two-legged humanoid does neither. It stays upright only because its controller keeps correcting its balance, which means a software fault, a slip, a collision or a flat battery can put a heavy machine on the floor, along with anything it was holding.

This hazard is central to ISO 25785-1. Its draft scope is defined around "actively controlled stability," which it describes as a robot that "requires an active control in order to remain balanced and could become unstable in the absence of power."

Questions to ask:

• How does the robot fall, and has the vendor tested falls from walking, turning, carrying and climbing?
• How much floor area around the robot could it strike if it fell while carrying its maximum load? Mark that zone on your layout.
• What does it do when its battery runs low: does it stop in a safe place and lower itself, or can it be caught mid-task?
• What happens to a held object during a fall? A dropped tote is a hazard of its own.
• Can it work on stairs or ramps at your site, and what is the fall history there?

Speed, separation and contact

Two long-standing approaches let robots and people share space. Speed and separation monitoring slows or stops the robot as a person gets closer. Power and force limiting keeps any contact below levels that would injure. Both are now covered within the 2025 ISO 10218 series, and both depend on the robot noticing people reliably.

Questions to ask:

• How does the robot detect people, and which of those sensors are safety-rated rather than general-purpose cameras?
• Where are its blind spots, especially behind it and near the floor?
• What are its maximum walking and arm speeds near people, and who can change those limits?
• If contact happens, what forces can it apply with an arm or a carried load, and how were they measured?
• How does detection perform in poor light, glare, smoke, steam or dust at your site?

Emergency stops that do not cause a second accident

On a fixed industrial robot, the classic emergency stop removes power from the motors. On a walking humanoid, that can be the wrong answer. As FORT Robotics chief technology officer Nathan Bivans wrote in Machine Design, "cutting power to the motors will cause a dangerous fall, potentially more dangerous than the hazard that originally required the stop." His argument is that a standard Category 0 stop, which cuts power at once, takes away the robot's ability to catch itself or make a controlled descent, so the engineering goal shifts from stopping the motors to managing the robot's momentum.

Questions to ask:

• Exactly what happens, step by step, when someone presses the emergency stop while the robot is walking, crouching or carrying something?
• Does the emergency stop cut motor power at once, or keep the robot powered until it reaches a stable pose or a controlled descent?
• Is there a wireless stop, how far does it reach, and what happens if its signal drops?
• Who carries a stop device, and how many are on the floor during each shift?
• Is there a slower protective stop for routine situations, separate from the emergency stop?
• Can you watch the vendor demonstrate every stop type on the model you are buying?

Cybersecurity: a networked machine that moves

A humanoid is a computer with arms and legs, connected to a network and often to its maker's cloud for updates and monitoring. A security failure can become a safety failure. The ISA/IEC 62443 series defines requirements and processes for securing industrial automation and control systems, and it rests on shared responsibility among asset owners, product suppliers, integrators and service providers. In practice, that means the vendor cannot secure the robot alone, and neither can you.

Questions to ask:

• Who can connect to the robot remotely, how are they authenticated, and is every session logged?
• Are software updates signed, and can you schedule or decline them?
• Can the robot run on an isolated network segment, and what stops working if it loses internet access?
• Can a remote command ever override the robot's local safety functions?
• How does the vendor report and patch vulnerabilities, and for how many years?

Privacy: cameras that walk around

A humanoid's cameras see everything it faces, including workers, customers, whiteboards, screens and, in a home, family members and guests. Some products add a remote human to the loop. As of September 2026, 1X says owners of its NEO home robot can schedule a 1X Expert to guide it through tasks it does not yet know, which means a remote person may see through the robot's cameras during those sessions.

Questions to ask:

• What does the robot record, where is it stored, and for how long?
• Is recorded data used to train the vendor's models, and can you opt out?
• When a remote operator is viewing or controlling the robot, how do the people nearby know?
• Can faces, screens or specific rooms be excluded or blurred?
• Who at the vendor can access footage, and how is that access audited?

Get the answers in writing

Verbal assurances in a sales meeting do not help anyone after an incident. Put the vendor's answers into the purchase or service agreement: which standards the robot meets, how its stops behave, its tested fall behavior, its security update commitments and its data handling terms. Then store your own risk assessment beside that agreement, and reopen both whenever the robot's tasks, your floor layout or its software changes.