Humanoid Safety Standards 2026: What Actually Applies

No humanoid robot on the market is certified to walk freely among workers. The standard written for them, ISO 25785-1, is still a committee draft in autumn 2026. The closest thing to a safety credential is site-specific: in November 2025 Agility Digit passed a field evaluation by an OSHA-recognised testing laboratory at one customer fulfilment site. So when Agility calls the 129 kg Digit 5 "cooperatively safe", it is describing a design, not a certificate. Buyers should read every humanoid safety claim that way.

Sources: ISO listings, the A3 summary of the 2025 ISO 10218 revision, Agility's Digit 5 announcement of 15 September 2026, and our catalog check of 26 September 2026. We quote no force or speed thresholds here; the standards themselves are the only valid source for those.

The standards, and which ones fit a humanoid

| Standard | What it covers | Status (Sep 2026) | Fit for humanoids | |---|---|---|---| | ISO 10218-1:2025 | Industrial robots: requirements for the robot maker, including robots for collaborative applications | Published early 2025 | Arms and control, not balance | | ISO 10218-2:2025 | Industrial robot applications and cells, including collaborative applications | Published early 2025 | The work cell, not a walking robot | | ISO/TS 15066:2016 | Collaborative operation, including force and pressure limits | Folded into ISO 10218-1 and -2:2025 | Via ISO 10218 | | ISO 13482:2014 | Personal care robots | Published; excludes industrial robots | Home and service use only | | ISO/FDIS 13482 | Service robots, personal and professional | Final draft in 2026; replaces the 2014 edition on publication | Service humanoids (reception, hospitals) | | ISO 25785-1 | Dynamically stable industrial mobile robots: legged, wheeled or other | Committee draft | Written for humanoids | | ANSI/A3 TR R15.108 | Same category, US and Canada | Technical report in development | Written for humanoids |

Two things stand out. The only documents written for humanoids are both unfinished. And the published standards split the robot in half: ISO 10218 handles the arms and the cell, service-robot rules handle robots near the public, and nothing published handles a 90 kg machine that stays upright only while its controller runs.

What ISO 10218 does and does not cover

The 2025 revision of ISO 10218 was the first since 2011. Part 1 sets requirements for industrial robot makers; Part 2 covers how robots are integrated into applications. The revision absorbed ISO/TS 15066, the collaborative-robot specification, into Parts 1 and 2, and dropped the term "collaborative robot" in favour of "collaborative application". The logic is that safety belongs to how a robot is used, not to the robot alone.

ISO/TS 15066 described four ways a robot and a person can share space: a safety-rated monitored stop, hand guiding, speed and separation monitoring, and power and force limiting. Those methods still apply to a humanoid's arms. A humanoid working at a fixed station and handling totes can be assessed much like a robot arm at the same station.

What the standard was never built for is locomotion. A robot arm bolted to the floor does not fall when it loses power. A biped does. Every Atlas, Digit and Walker S2 that walks between stations carries a hazard that ISO 10218 does not address: a fall. That gap is what ISO 25785-1 is meant to close.

ISO 25785-1: the humanoid standard that is not finished

ISO 25785-1 sets safety requirements for industrial mobile robots with actively controlled stability: robots with legs, wheels or other locomotion that could become unstable without power. It covers humanoids, quadrupeds and balancing wheeled platforms in industrial settings. ISO lists it as a committee draft, which means the text is still changing and there is no publication date.

Agility says it is a contributor to ISO 25785-1 and a project leader on ANSI/A3 TR R15.108, the matching technical report for the US and Canada. That puts a leading warehouse-humanoid maker in the room where its own rules are written. It is normal for standards work, and it also means buyers should not treat a vendor's reading of a draft as the final text.

Until ISO 25785-1 is published, a humanoid deployment rests on the integrator's risk assessment: ISO 10218 for the arms and the cell, local machinery rules, and whatever separation the site chooses.

What "cooperatively safe" means in Agility's own words

Agility's announcement lists three parts of the Digit 5 safety design. Safe human detection: AI algorithms and multiple sensor types watch for people, and the robot avoids them, stops, or sits down. Safety cues: lights and sound show where the robot is about to move. Safe motion control: an independent safety controller triggers a response when a person comes within an unsafe distance.

The sitting-down response is the telling detail. A standing biped that stops does not become safe; it has to lower itself so that it cannot fall on someone. That is exactly the hazard the existing standards do not cover.

The claim is also bounded by what Agility itself says. Digit 5 is "expected" to carry a CE mark. The OSHA-recognised field evaluation was for the current Digit, at one site, and field evaluations apply to the installation that was tested. Agility expects Digit 5 early access to begin in the first half of 2027. For the full spec comparison, see Digit 5 vs Digit and the Atlas vs Digit page.

Mass is the risk

Safety standards talk about force, speed and separation. For a humanoid, the input to all three is mass.

Digit 5 weighs 129 kg, almost twice the current Digit at 65 kg. Atlas weighs 90 kg, UBTECH Walker S2 73 kg. At the other end, Unitree G1 weighs 35 kg and 1X NEO 30 kg. A fall or a contact from a 129 kg robot is a different event from one involving a 35 kg robot, whatever software sits on top.

This is why Agility's pitch for Digit 5 is notable: it made the robot heavier and, at the same time, claimed it can work closer to people. The heavier frame carries more payload, 22.7 kg against 16 kg, and it raises the stakes of every safety function working as designed. The Atlas vs Walker S2 comparison sets out the specs of the two other heavy industrial bipeds.

What factories actually require today

Look at where humanoids work and the pattern is consistent. Walker S2 runs at Geely in Ningbo and Foxconn in Zhengzhou. Atlas works at Hyundai Metaplant Georgia, where an Atlas training centre opened in September 2026. Digit runs at Amazon and GXO sites. Every industrial deployment on our deployments map is a pilot or a defined work area, and none is described as open-floor work among people. We covered the site list in where humanoid robots actually work.

UBTECH and Boston Dynamics have not published safety certifications for Walker S2 or Atlas. That does not mean the robots are unsafe; it means the safety case is made site by site, between the maker, the integrator and the plant.

For a buyer in 2026 the practical checklist is short. Ask which standard the vendor designed against, and whether that is a published standard or a draft. Ask for any third-party evaluation and which site it covered. Ask how the robot behaves on power loss and whether it can fall in the work area. And plan the cell with separation, using speed and separation monitoring or physical fencing, until ISO 25785-1 is published and a robot is certified against it.

"Safe around people" in a press release is a design goal. A certificate names a standard, a test body and a scope. At the time of writing, no humanoid has the second for open work among people.