Increasingly robots and autonomous vehicles are working alongside operators. But what about the standards? What is to be expected in this field? Do you want to know which standards affect you?
With the support of the Belgian FPS Economy, Sirris has set up the Standards Cell 'Industrie 4.0' to inform Belgian companies - essentially SMEs - about the various existing standards and those in preparation. The Standards Cell Industrie 4.0 is intended for the manufacturers of machines and automatic manufacturing cells, the integrators of IT systems and end users.
The most relevant standards for robotics in industrial environments are managed by the ISO in particular by the technical committees ISO/TC 299 ‘Robotics’ and ISO/TC 199 ‘Safety of machinery’. The robotic standards activities handled by these two technical committees cover three areas: terminology, safety of robotic applications, mechanical interfaces.
We have drafted a document which shows the standards in force and their development projects. It should be noted at present that the standards on the safety of industrial robots and robotic systems ISO 10218-1 and ISO 10218-2 are currently being revised. Not only is there no mention of collaborative robots in FDIS 10218-2 (this was not the case in ISO10218-2:2011 either), but now not even collaborative mode or collaborative operation. Collaborative is considered to be something that can only be the result of designing a collaborative application and not something of the device or the modes of the device.
The final version will be published in 2024.
More information can be obtained from the Sirris Standards Cell 'Industrie 4.0'.
This is an update of an article first published Feb. 10, 2021.
