The Latest in Autonomous Mobile Robots: New Safety Standards, Greater Usability, and Advanced Features

Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are on the move with new safety standards coming out in 2025, usability improvements that reduce cost of ownership (TCO) and improve return on investment (ROI), and advanced features that take AMRs to places no AMR has gone before.

To learn about what’s new with autonomous mobile robots, we spoke to AMR solutions experts at 3Laws Robotics, Ati Motors, WiBotic, and Zebra Technologies, as well as our robotics safety standards expert at A3.

What’s new in safety standards for AMRs

There are new and revised standards for industrial mobile robots (IMRs), mobile service robots, and driverless industrial trucks, shares Carole Franklin, director for robotics standards development for A3. But it’s important to understand the distinction between industrial mobile robots and mobile service robots, she explains. The difference depends on the environment in which the robots are used. In an industrial workplace, the humans are working-age adults who can be trained in how to interact safely with robots. By contrast, a service environment may be a home or public space where children and members of the public not trained in safe robot interactions are present. 

For IMRs, the North American ANSI/RIA standard recently became a family of standards with the addition of Part 2, R15.08-2-2023 American National Standard for Industrial Mobile Robots - Safety Requirement, published in October 2023. The IMR Part 2 standard, which focuses on systems and system integration, came a few years after Part 1, Mobile Robot Standard R15.08-1-2020. And, expected in 2025, a third part will set forth safety requirements that span the lifecycles of IMRs. 

As for mobile service robots, a new standard is also expected in 2025, the Service Robot Safety standard, ISO/DIS 13482. The standard replaces and renames the decade-old Personal Care Robot Safety standard, ISO 13482:2014. 
The driverless industrial trucks safety standard is also undergoing an update. Franklin advises AMR companies to consider whether ISO 3691-4:2023, Safety of Driverless Industrial Trucks applies to their product. 

For aspects of industrial automated mobile machines not covered by ISO 3691-4, two technical committees are considering the development of a new ISO standard or family of ISO standards. Committee members want to take globally an IMR safety standard like ANSI/RIA R15.08, says Franklin.

AMRs that work as a team

The Part 2 IMR safety standard, R15.08-2-2023, reflects an industry trend toward more integrated and complex AMR systems. The standard enables businesses to deploy larger fleets of mobile robotics solutions that work together and improve AMR usability. Matthew Wicks, general manager of robotics automation at Zebra Technologies, says, “While initial AMR safety standards focused on just the robots, the new standards are focused on AMRs in integrated solutions.”

Wicks describes a warehouse fulfillment solution in which several AMRs serve a worker at once, meeting the worker along the way to collect items the worker picks. “It’s like a dance between the robots and the person doing the picking operation. With a team-intelligence approach, both robot utilization and picker performance rise.”

In this use case, each picker receives information on a wearable device directing them where to go, what to pick, and how many items to pick. Meanwhile, the AMRs on the team move into position so that the picker always can access the AMR to place any picked items. This is all done along an optimal route for the pickers and AMRs. Once an order is picked, the AMR delivers its items to a packing and shipping station. When finished with this delivery, the AMR returns back to the picking operations with another team of pickers and AMRs. A team of small, fast, safely controlled robots keeps pace with the worker. In addition to improving worker productivity for fulfillment operations, the AMR systems function safely and harmoniously within the warehouse environment.” he says.

Co-existence of diverse robots and AMR infrastructure

Not only do like-robots work together, but large e-commerce companies use different types of robots in the same space, says Ben Waters, CEO of WiBotic, a company that supplies reliable wireless power and battery intelligence solutions to charge mobile robot systems. If different types of AMRs and AMR infrastructure, like battery chargers, are to work together safely, communication protocols must be cybersecure. “That requires beefing up API protocols, isolating code, and using encryption to meet corporate cybersecurity requirements. In the future, such cybersecurity requirements may find their way into safety standards for robots.”

Waters goes on to explain that space to charge robots is at a premium in warehouses with hundreds of AMRs. While in the past, facilities may have had one or two types of mobile robots, now they may have hundreds each of several types of AMR in the same warehouse. If each AMR needs a 25-square-foot charging dock, which is typical, that adds up to a lot of valuable space. “So companies ask, can we get by with 200 wireless chargers to service 500 robots? Can the same charger fill different types of batteries? The issue of different types of batteries in AMR fleets drives users to interoperable wireless chargers, which are like a wireless phone charger that works with both Apple and Android devices.” 

Interoperable wireless charging docks improve usability as well. “Contact points are among the first parts of a robot or charger to fail,” Waters says. “Eliminating contact points lowers the need for maintenance by human workers and enables the robots to stay autonomous and keep working.” Off-the-shelf wireless charging systems for indoor and outdoor systems of mobile robots are available that meet ANSI/CAN/UL 3100: Standard for Safety for Automated Mobile Platforms (AMPs) as well as the standards discussed earlier and electronic communication rules that prevent wireless interference. 

Another issue when multiple fleets are used together is the ability for newer AMRs to work around older automated guided vehicles (AGVs). This problem has also been solved. Saurabh Chandra, CEO of Ati Motors, a company that creates and deploys robotics-based solutions for material movement operations in industry, explains that his company worked with a customer who was unable to deploy newer robots because they had an old AGV that couldn’t integrate to coordinate activities with newer mobile robots. Now, a system of infrastructure cameras enables newer AMRs to develop a yielding behavior so that old and new mobile robots can co-exist. 

Fewer emergency stops and greater safety in motion

Stopping a robot is a common approach to enforce AMR safety, but an emergency stop requires a worker to restart the robot, which reduces usability. Some AMRs are now being built with dynamic safety features that enable automated restarting after a safety-rated stop. Andrew Singletary, CEO of 3Laws Robotics, a company that provides safety guardrails for autonomous system solutions, focuses on ensuring safety during autonomous motion, or safe autonomy. “Keeping robots moving is especially important in a multi-system environment where if one robot stops, another also has to stop, and gridlock ensues,” he says. “For example, instead of triggering a stop, a box falling off a shelf will cause a robot to simply slow down and move around the box with safe autonomy.”

Singletary goes on to explain that such capabilities are made possible by better sensor technologies. This includes lidar with velocity data, obstacle detection through AI large models, and small powerful microcontrollers as well as mathematics, like constraint equations, friction models, and impact laws, that better model contact between two objects. 

He shares a practical example of an industrial vacuum cleaner that needs to get as close as possible to a wall to clean the edges of a floor while reliably avoiding contact with the wall and other objects. Going slow in some situations is more productive than risking an emergency stop.  

His colleague, Amir Sharif, COO at 3Laws, adds an example of an autonomous forklift. When a forklift takes a more direct route, it can drive faster than on a route that requires turns. By designing AMR software with smaller buffers around objects instead of larger ones, engineers can enable safe autonomy at higher speeds with shorter paths, resulting in more efficient operations.

Simpler fleet management software

Many of the experts we spoke to cited simpler fleet management software as a recent advance in AMR usability, including easier-to-use base units, mobile manipulators, and robotics infrastructure. Waters, of WiBotic, says, “When a problem arises, such as an end-user effector needs to be changed or a robot breaks, the fleet management software handles the problem better than in the past, such as by sending an alert to someone and instructing them on what to do.”

Waters goes on to say, “In addition, fleet management providers and software infrastructure providers are working together to support interoperability, such as enabling products from multiple companies to read data from robotics infrastructure like battery chargers. As robotics infrastructure companies work together and create more ways for AMR technology to benefit manufacturers , the industry is moving up the Slope of Enlightenment in Gartner’s Hype Cycle.”

Advanced features in AMRs

Other innovations enable new AMR features, such as summon-on-demand, detection of impediments ranging from wet surfaces to cables, clutter navigation, and opening of doors. Such capabilities, which AI and deep learning enable, create opportunities to deploy AMRs in new applications and locations. Chandra, of Ati Motors, provides details:

Summon a robot: Rather than making milk runs — pre-programmed, scheduled routes — a summon-a-robot button enables workers to call for an AMR on demand, which enables smaller fleets to do more because a robot is sent only when there is something to pick up. A pull-based system like this allocates the closest available robot and sends it to the worker’s location, like an Uber rideshare. He gives an example of a tire plant that uses a summons button to send an empty cart to a worker as needed and then delivers a full cart of tires to a quality-control or finished-goods station. “With a pull-approach, the user achieves a better ROI.”

Cable detection: Safety standards allow robot manufacturers to run over small objects, which are assumed to be debris. But running over a cable can damage it. With a trained AI model, AMRs stop and wait for a person to move the cable and then proceed when the path is clear. 

Interplant movement through closed doors: Using proximity-based triggers, AMRs can open automated doors as they approach. 

Clutter navigation: Inventory stored on the sides of an aisle would typically cause an AMR to stop, because the robot couldn’t handle the narrowed path. Slowing down, an approach used by humans in similar circumstances, enables AMRs to navigate in cluttered areas. 

Wet-surface detection: In the past, robots encountering a wet surface had to stop or become mired in a slippery place. Either way, a human had to intervene. Due to reflections on the surface of the water, avoiding wet areas was difficult. However, with an AI model an AMR can navigate slowly around or through a puddle, and even drive through rain. 

The following video shows interplant movement, clutter navigation, and wet surface detection, among other uses of safe autonomy.

Source: ATI Motors, Saurabh Chandra

What’s next for AMRs?

Forklift replacements and legged robots are two AMR solutions our panel of experts anticipate will be seen in the future. “It’s no secret that companies are trying to replace human-driven forklifts, also called fork trucks, because they pose a relatively high risk of safety incidents,” says Chandra. He expects the forklift workflow to be redesigned and separated into AMR stackers and pallet movers. 

Legged robots are another AMR innovation in development. Singleterry, of 3Laws, explains that legged robots can navigate over surfaces that wheeled robots cannot, making a quadruped ideal for awkward and dangerous inspection roles, such as examining a nuclear site. “Quadrupeds have come down in price dramatically,” he says. “Practical use of bipedal robots is further in the future. Bipedal locomotion is difficult to do robustly — so much computation is required even as that is becoming more efficient. Clearly, there are safety issues to consider as well — pull the plug and the robot falls down.”

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