New ISO standard lets mobile robots from rival vendors share a floor

New ISO standard lets mobile robots from rival vendors share a floor

3 November 2026: ISO has published ISO 21423:2026, a communication and interoperability standard meant to let industrial mobile robots from different suppliers work in one building and exchange their position, speed and tasks. The Association for Advancing Automation, A3, announced it and sells the document through its store, and says it gives manufacturers and users a common basis for communication across fleets.

Not yet independently verified. We read this in Robotics 24/7's report of the A3 announcement, because the A3 and ISO sites refused our requests. We have not seen the standard's text or its price, and we have seen no vendor state that it conforms. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

What the robots have to tell each other

The full title is ISO 21423 Robotics, Industrial mobile robots, Communications and interoperability, and it comes from ISO Technical Committee 299. It specifies how industrial mobile robots, their fleet managers and other equipment exchange information and request actions. Robots can share location, speed, direction, condition, tasking and availability.

The scope reaches past the robots themselves. A3 says the standard also covers communication with machines tended by robots, with enterprise resource planning tools, and with building systems such as lifts, automated doors and alarms. People carrying mobile devices can share similar information, so that their work can be coordinated with the robots around them.

The problem mixed fleets run into

A3's case rests on sites that run robots from more than one supplier. It says the standard should mean fewer cases of robots interfering with each other's paths or path planning, which improves robot availability, and that a common protocol should increase competition among suppliers.

Carole Franklin, A3's director of standards development for robotics, put the demand plainly: "Companies want to choose the robots that fit their applications and have those robots work together on the same floor." She added that many leading industrial users have asked for such a standard for years, and that it can help companies "make better use of the robots they already have".

InOrbit.AI ran robot interoperability demonstrations at Automate 2026 in Chicago, which A3 describes as a practical reference for the standard. Robotics 24/7 reports that this is the first non-safety robot standard A3 has helped produce, and that its international status means it can be adopted in any country.

What to ask a vendor now

Publication does not by itself make any robot conformant, and the announcement names no certification scheme and no vendor with a shipping implementation. A buyer writing a tender for mobile robots can still ask two specific things: whether the supplier's fleet manager will implement ISO 21423:2026 and by when, and whether lift, door and ERP integration will go through it or through the supplier's own interfaces.

The second answer matters most on sites where the lift or door vendor is a third party, because the standard names those systems explicitly and a buyer can hold a supplier to that scope.

Where the makers sit in our catalogue

Our robot manufacturer category lists 62 companies and our robotics integrators category 25, the firms most likely to be asked this question first. A3 scheduled its International Robot Safety Conference in Detroit for 3 to 5 November, the week of the announcement.

Sources

• Robotics 24/7: ISO 21423 helps mobile robots from different vendors communicate together (reporting the A3 announcement), 3 November 2026