Robots in public need standards written for the public
Author: Bern Grush
Date Published: October 18, 2026
Mobile robots are leaving the warehouse to deliver on sidewalks, clean malls, and work in airports. The standards that govern them have not made the same move. No complete standards framework exists for robots that operate among bystanders in public places. Much of what the industry promises for delivery robots, service robots, and physical AI depends on that work. Few buyers, cities, or funders treat it as urgent. They should.
The landscape in brief
Machine safety standards follow a three-tier structure drawn from ISO/IEC Guide 51.
Type A sets basic principles. ISO 12100 (risk assessment and risk reduction) is the anchor.
Type B covers safety aspects and components used across many machines. Examples: ISO 13849-1 and IEC 62061 for control-system safety, and IEC 61496 for protective sensing such as safety LiDAR.
Type C covers one machine family and its significant hazards. Where a Type C standard exists, it takes precedence over A and B.
For mobile robots, the governing standard depends on where the robot works:
Setting | Robot | Governing standard |
Industrial, public excluded | Wheeled or tracked AGV/AMR | ISO 3691-4:2023 (Global) ANSI/A3 R15.08 (North America) |
Industrial, public excluded | Legged and humanoid | ISO 25785-1 (Committee Draft stage) |
Industrial, public excluded | Mobile base with arm | ISO 10218-1 (arm and controller) ISO 10218-2 (integrated application; cell) ISO/TS 15066 (collaborative robotics) |
Public space | Delivery, maintenance, service | ISO 13482 (service robots in public environments; device safety) ISO 4448 series (public-area mobile robots, bystander safety; in development) |
The first three rows describe controlled sites with trained staff. The last row describes a sidewalk, an airport concourse, or a hospital hallway. Manufacturers have certified delivery and guide robots to ISO 13482, yet that standard was not written for the public. ISO 4448 is intended to fill that gap.
Where the public-space standard falls short
ISO 13482:2014 covers personal care robots: mobile servants, physical assistants, and person carriers. It protects the person the robot serves.
Salvini, et al [1] reviewed EN ISO 13482:2014 for use in public spaces. They found that it lacks requirements to protect pedestrians and bystanders, and that it assumes public spaces carry the same hazards as a household or office. Specifically:
Bystanders count as objects. The standard treats people near the robot as “safety-related objects,” mainly in collision cases. A later technical report, ISO/TR 23482-2:2019, adds some bystander guidance. The standard itself does not.
Crowds are not treated as a hazard. Crowd density, and its variation through the day, falls outside the hazard analysis.
Social norms and proxemics are absent. The standard’s answer to a detected person is a protective stop. A stopped robot in a crowd becomes an obstacle for everyone else.
Misbehaviour is unaddressed. Vandalism, tampering, and abuse occur in public. The standard is silent on these acts.
Security and psychological hazards are thin. The authors flag cyber and physical attacks on robots, and fear, discomfort, and loss of privacy among bystanders.
The authors call for either amending ISO 13482 or writing a new standard. ISO 4448 takes the second path.
Our own review adds further issues. These reflect URF’s analysis and extend Salvini’s findings:
Perception ignores speed. Nothing ties sensing range to travel speed. A cyclist and a child emerging from a blind corner close at different speeds and demand different sensing ranges.
No evidence trail. After a collision, no common data record supports reconstruction, insurance, municipal review, or the training of navigation systems.
Accessibility sits outside the scope. A robot that narrows a sidewalk for a wheelchair user can still comply.
The city is absent. No part of the framework connects a robot to the authority that manages the pathway.
A manufacturer can meet every applicable standard and field a robot a city cannot accept. A city can write rules with no technical standard to cite. Both outcomes slow adoption and shift risk onto bystanders.
What ISO 4448 is doing
ISO 4448 addresses public-area mobile robots (PMRs) under ISO/TC 204, Intelligent Transport Systems. Its premise: a public robot is a participant in the pedestrian and traffic system, not an isolated machine. The question shifts from “is the machine safe?” to “is the robot predictable, accountable, and governable in public?”
The series has sixteen planned topics. Status today:
• Published: overview of the paradigm.
• In publication: concept of operations.
• Fully drafted: journey meso-planning.
• Pending funding: the other thirteen.
The published overview sets the paradigm. A PMR must navigate by the social, spatial, and travel rules of the walkway, bikeway, or crosswalk, and must not disturb, block, or delay the people near it. The concept of operations defines who does what across operators, robots, and public spaces. Journey meso-planning sets the perception range a robot requires, based on its own speed and the speed of surrounding road users.
Pending work falls into three groups:
Behaviour in shared space
• Social navigation in shared pathways
• Roadway crossing behaviours
• Human-robot communication: signals and signage
• Last-mile transition operations, including legged and wheeled-legged robots
• Follow-me robots and platooning
• Passenger-carrying PMRs
Safety, evidence, and trust
• Onboard safety, minimal risk condition, and remote oversight
• Journey data recorder and incident reconstruction
• Positioning, maps, and location recovery
• Data privacy and cybersecurity
Governance at city scale
• Accessibility and inclusive interaction
• Multi-fleet orchestration, congestion, and curfews
• Municipal regulation, licensing, certification, and insurance
Each part of ISO 4448 series answers a gap identified above. Together they give manufacturers a design target, cities a standard to cite, and insurers a basis to price risk. It also gives regulators a shared vocabulary, so a robot approved in one city does not start from zero in the next.
ISO 4448 does not replace ISO 13482. A public robot still needs the physical and functional safety that 13482 and related Type B standards provide. ISO 4448 adds what they omit: how the robot behaves among non-involved, untrained, unprotected, and inattentive bystanders, and how a city verifies that behaviour.
Who should care
Standards work runs on expertise and funding. Today it runs on too little of both. The pending topics remain unfunded, and each has a natural sponsor: robot makers, fleet operators, insurers, road authorities, mapping firms, accessibility groups, and municipal associations. Sponsors shape the scope and timeline of the part that affects them.
If your organization builds, deploys, insures, or regulates robots that share space with the public, the Urban Robotics Foundation can advise on standardization, certification, and regulation. Contact us to discuss your needs.
The Urban Robotics Foundation is a nonprofit standards body. Download our free 2026 whitepaper at https://www.urbanroboticsfoundation.org/2026-whitepaper-robots-in-public. Learn more at www.urbanroboticsfoundation.org.
[1] Salvini, P., Paez-Granados, D., and Billard, A. 2021. On the Safety of Mobile Robots Serving in Public Spaces: Identifying gaps in EN ISO 13482:2014 and calling for a new standard. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction 10(3), Article 19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442678
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