As of 1st July this year the ISO have released a NEW (not a revised standard) for robots.
ISO 10218-2:2011 “Robots and robotic devices — Safety requirements for industrial robots — Part 2: Robot systems and integration”
We have had ISO 10218 part 1 for some time, which can trace itself back to EN775 in 1993. This standard was slanted towards the robot manufacturer and dealt with the robot as a stand alone item.
The problem was, it did not look at the integration and use of the robot in a process.
This is where the Americans in particular the Robot Industries Association (RIA) has had a far superior standard, namely R15.06. With revision, this has been in place for more than 10 years and worked well.
The ISO in collaboration with the ANSI/RIA have now generated the international standard ISO 10218 Part 2 and this now gives us global set of safety requirements.
This standard is a available from the ISO but is not yet readily available elsewhere.
If you do go looking for this online please don’t mix it up with EN 10218 parts 1 and 2 for “Steel Wire Products”. EN is a European Norm standard, only the strange workings of bureaucracy can come up with conflict of numbers like that.