Definitional ambiguities in physical assistant robots and their regulatory implications: A systematic review

There is a lack of clarity on the meaning of Physical Assistant Robots (“ PAR(s) ”), and limited research on this topic. The ISO 13482:2014 standard, which outlines safety requirements for personal care robots, provides a vague definition, using terms such as ‘physical assistance’ and ‘personal capabilities’ without adequate elaboration. While the standard primarily focuses on exoskeletons as PARs, other robots, such as feeding robots or clothing assistants, are not explicitly considered, complicating the interpretation of what qualifies as a PAR. Further, the scope of the standard and its exclusion of industrial and medical robots, which can perform similar tasks to PARs, causes additional uncertainty. For instance, the same exoskeleton robot intended to provide back-support can be used in industrial, medical and personal care contexts. Clarifying these aspects is essential to understanding the scope of the regulation and ensuring sufficient consideration of the safety aspects of PARs. This systematic review addresses these gaps by analysing 243 scholarly works that discuss robots in the context of physical assistance and examines how PARs (and similar terms) are defined and mentioned in the literature. Given the challenges identified in categorising specific robots as PARs, this paper proposes a flowchart to navigate ISO 13482:2014 and ease this categorisation, enabling stakeholders such as manufacturers, regulators and researchers to determine whether a robot is a PAR. Finally, as ISO 13482:2014 will be replaced by a new version, this paper examines how the revised standard reshapes the scope of PARs.