Humanoid Robots Are Hitting People in Public. The Safety Standard Won't Arrive Until 2028.

In June 2026, a Unitree G1 humanoid robot wearing a blue clown wig roundhouse-kicked a young boy in the stomach during a martial-arts demonstration at a tourist site in Xinjiang, China ^NS. Three months earlier, an AGiBot humanoid at a HaiDiLao hotpot restaurant in Cupertino, California began flailing its arms uncontrollably, knocking over dishes and tableware while three staff members physically wrestled to subdue it ^IIF.

Neither incident caused serious injury. But safety engineers say they are early-warning signals of a much larger problem: humanoid robots are entering factories, restaurants, and public spaces under a regulatory framework that was designed for a completely different kind of machine. The first international safety standard written specifically for humanoids won't be published until roughly mid-2028 ^RI.

Why Bipedal Robots Are a Different Safety Problem

Traditional industrial robots (governed by ISO 10218) are fixed-base arms bolted inside guarded cells with known kinematic envelopes. Humanoid robots break virtually every assumption behind those standards ^I.

• Unpredictable reach and momentum. Unlike a fixed-arm robot whose workspace is precisely defined, a humanoid combines bipedal locomotion with anthropomorphic limbs, extending its reachable space dynamically and unpredictably. A high-velocity kick or swing can carry far more momentum than a caged industrial arm ^RI.
• Fall-and-crush hazard. Bipedal robots depend on dynamic stability — continuous active balancing. Any interruption in power, a joint malfunction, or a software glitch can cause the robot to fall ^NI. When a ~200 lb humanoid topples, it can crush a worker beneath it. This hazard category simply doesn't exist for bolted-down robots that remain stationary when powered down ^I.
• No guaranteed "safe" stop. For a fixed industrial robot, an emergency stop just halts the arm. For a dynamically stable humanoid, cutting power may cause the robot to lose balance and fall — which can be more dangerous than letting it keep moving ^NN.
• Falling is an intrinsic, unsolved risk. Academic research confirms that "bipedal locomotion makes humanoid robots inherently prone to falls" and that "no existing approach fully averts loss of balance" ^NN. Even state-of-the-art protective control methods cannot guarantee stability ^AW.

The Standard That Doesn't Exist Yet

ISO 25785-1 is the first ISO standard specifically designed to address the unique hazards of humanoids and other dynamically stable robots. Its full title is "Robotics — Safety requirements for dynamically stable industrial mobile robots (legged, wheeled, or other forms of locomotion) — Part 1: Robots" ^S. The standard deliberately avoids the word "humanoid," using the technical descriptor "industrial mobile robots with actively controlled stability" to focus on safety-relevant characteristics rather than appearance ^B.

Milestone	Date
Approved Work Item (AWI)	May 9, 2025 — ISO/TC 299 approved development of ISO 25785-1 NIL
Working Draft (WD) published	May 2025, with input from A3, Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics RKT
Current stage	Close of comment period [20.60] — draft is under review I
Expected publication	Mid-2028 (the standard must clear four more stages before becoming a Final Draft International Standard) RIL

Until ISO 25785-1 is published, humanoid robots on factory floors are governed by a patchwork of existing standards — ISO 10218:2025 and ANSI/A3 R15.06-2025 — that were never designed for them ^RIT. As one industry commentator put it, "a bipedal robot cannot be bolted to the floor. When power is cut, it falls — introducing a fall-risk hazard category entirely absent from traditional robot safety analysis" ^R.

The Human Cost of the Gap

The Xinjiang incident involved a 70-pound Unitree G1 whose joints can each generate over 100 Nm of torque ^I. The performance area lacked any physical safety barriers, allowing the audience to stand within striking distance ^I. The boy's mother criticized the slow staff response after the kick ^NS.

The Cupertino incident was triggered by human error: an employee accidentally activated the robot's "crazy dance" mode, which is controlled via a phone app or remote ^GA. The robot struck a table, sending plates and chopsticks flying. Three staff members struggled to control it — one repeatedly trying to turn it off via an app — before physically restraining it with a strap ^SN.

Both incidents echo a pattern that safety experts have been warning about. In March 2025, Agility Robotics' Digit toppled over face-first onto concrete during a trade exhibition ^T. McKinsey has noted that "further scaling of robotics depends on additional work on safety, particularly when AI models are deployed to control robots" ^M. A Fraunhofer study found that more than 41% of industry participants still cite safety as the primary concern across all robot types ^I.

The Bottom Line

The Xinjiang kick and Cupertino dance-off are early-warning signals that the regulatory framework is lagging years behind deployment. Humanoids introduce fall-and-crush hazards, unpredictable dynamic reach, and uncontrolled post-power-loss behavior that existing fixed-robot safety standards cannot address. The first dedicated standard, ISO 25785-1, was approved for development in May 2025 but will not be published until roughly mid-2028 — leaving a multi-year safety gap as humanoids begin entering factories and public spaces today.