Key Strategic Insights

1. Safety Is Expanding Beyond Physical Risk

Traditional safety standards focused on physical hazards: motion, force, speed and interaction with humans. While these remain essential, modern robots must also ensure safe behaviour under software failure, communication loss and degraded operating conditions.

What this requires

• Safety concepts that cover both hardware and software failure modes
• Clear definition of safe states and fallback behaviour
• Architectures that separate safety-critical and non-safety-critical functions

2. Navigation Without GPS Drives New Safety Constraints

Many robots operate indoors, underground or in environments where GPS is unavailable or unreliable. Autonomous navigation in these scenarios introduces safety challenges around localisation accuracy, obstacle detection and environmental uncertainty.

What this requires

• Sensor fusion approaches that maintain safe operation without absolute positioning
• Deterministic processing paths for navigation and collision avoidance
• Safety mechanisms that handle localisation uncertainty gracefully

3. Cybersecurity Becomes a Safety Issue

Cyber threats increasingly have direct safety implications. Manipulated data, compromised updates or unauthorised access can cause unsafe robot behaviour. This is driving tighter coupling between safety and security requirements.

What this requires

• Security-by-design principles aligned with regulatory expectations
• Documented vulnerability handling and patch management processes
• Platforms capable of supporting long-term security updates

4. The Cyber Resilience Act Raises the Bar

The EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) introduces mandatory cybersecurity requirements for connected products, including many robotics systems. Compliance will not only affect software but also hardware selection, update mechanisms and long-term support strategies.

What this requires

• Security-by-design principles aligned with regulatory expectations
• Documented vulnerability handling and patch management processes
• Platforms capable of supporting long-term security updates

5. Over-the-Air Updates Must Be Safety-Aware

OTA updates are essential for maintaining security and functionality, but they also introduce compliance risk. An uncontrolled update can invalidate safety assumptions or certifications.

What this requires

• Update mechanisms with rollback, verification and version control
• Clear rules defining which updates require re-validation
• Strong coordination between safety, security and operations teams