What are the most important elements of the 2025 update?
The biggest thing for everybody to wrap their arms around is that requirements that were implied -to careful readers- in the 2011 version are now stated explicitly.
For example, we now have a requirement that talks about ‘capability of lifting.’ When an industrial robot lifts and moves a part around in space, all sorts of forces, accelerations and torques are put on the robot arm. Until now, we didn’t have a requirement of a ‘safety factor for lifting’ or a ‘safety factor for moving dynamically’. It was never stated. Was that a problem for robot manufacturers? We’re not aware of it ever being a problem, because otherwise the robot wouldn't work. But it is explicitly laid out in the 2025 version.
The advantage of having more clarity is that it evens the playing field. If everybody says they're meeting the standard, we at least have a very baseline comparison from a safety standpoint.
Most of the big improvements are in Part 2. For example, we emphasized the robot application and the robot cell, whereas the 2011 version covered robot systems with end effectors which was implied to cover the parts, the intended use, and the safeguarding. Those elements are more explicitly covered now.
ISO/TS 15066 for collaborative robot applications has been incorporated into the upgraded standard and ISO/TS 15066 will eventually become its own standard.
There are also added requirements for cybersecurity.
Part 1 saw a few significant changes. For example, there's a lot more requirements and clarity around safety functions. Whereas the 2011 document required just a few safety functions, the 2025 version requires more than twenty.
What does it mean for manufacturers and integrators?
All robot manufacturers have some work to do. For some it's less than others but all robot manufacturers are going to be making improvements. The dominant robot brands, including Universal Robots, have tried to do a good job around functional safety and safety. All of us have provided some of the new safety functions required. Did we all think we were doing a good job? Yes. Are there now gaps for every robot manufacturer? Yes. The 'old' standard will be withdrawn in the spring of 2027. Before then, manufacturers will need to be in compliance with the new 2025 document.
There are head scratchers too. For example, one of the new requirements relates to external axes. Every manufacturer offers external axes, and all the credible manufacturers offer a safety function for speed limiting.
In the new Part 1 standard however, manufacturers are required to externalize some of the safety functions for an external or auxiliary axis. For example, they might explain how to use the robot’s safety functions to do axis limiting of an external axis and how to have the robot’s speed limit apply to the motion with the external axis when the whole base is moving. We’re going to have to tell integration folks how to accomplish this and that's not an easy thing. Can it be done? Yes. Manufacturers will have to update their user manuals. I'm still scratching my head over that, but we'll do it, and so will all the manufacturers.
Part 2 establishes new requirements for the integration. Similar to Part 1, Part 2 is more concise and it has many more safety functions required than the previous edition. But Part 2 has a number of informative annexes with lots of illustrations. Functional safety is also greatly expanded in the new edition.