Safety transparency barometer 2026: of 101 autonomous cleaning robots, how many publish their conformity to IEC 63327?

An autonomous cleaning robot works among people: in a reception lobby, a sales floor, a hospital corridor, a warehouse aisle. Its safety is therefore not a theoretical question, and since 2021 there has been an international standard that addresses it: IEC 63327, the standard for floor treatment machines with autonomous functions for commercial use. We wanted to know how many manufacturers publicly state that they conform to it. For the 101 robots from 35 manufacturers documented in our database, we recorded what their public documentation says about this standard. The result is clear: a large majority of models publish nothing. This article sets out the method, the figures by family and by country of origin, what the standard actually covers, why silence is not non-conformity, and what a buyer should ask a supplier for. It will be updated every year. This barometer is consolidated, together with the market structure and the interoperability study, in the Robotic Cleaning Observatory 2026.

What IEC 63327 covers, and why it matters

IEC 63327, published in 2021 by the International Electrotechnical Commission and adopted in Europe as EN IEC 63327, is titled "Automatic floor treatment machines for commercial use: particular requirements". It supplements the general standard for commercial floor treatment machines (IEC 60335-2-72) by adding what is specific to autonomy: detection of people and obstacles, including low obstacles and people lying on the floor, detection of drops and steps, speeds and stopping distances, visual and audible warning signals, emergency stop, behaviour when a sensor fails, and the tests that allow all of this to be verified. It applies to robotic scrubbers, sweepers and autonomous vacuums, not to machines guided by an operator.

It matters because, without it, the safety of an autonomous robot is judged on brochure claims, "people detection", "dynamic obstacle avoidance", which 97% of the models in our database make, with no way for a buyer to compare what those words actually cover. The standard defines reproducible tests; a declaration of conformity, and even more so a certification by a third-party body, states that a model has passed them. For an operator putting a robot to work in the presence of the public, this is the document that its insurer, its health and safety committee or its client may ask to see.

Methodology

The Easy to Clean database documents 101 commercial cleaning robots from 35 manufacturers against 81 criteria, drawn from the data sheets, websites, brochures and press releases of the manufacturers and their distributors and verified model by model. For this study, we recorded the "IEC 63327 conformity" column as it appears in each model's public documentation at the verification date (2025-2026), and sorted it into four categories: "published" (IEC 63327 or EN IEC 63327 conformity or certification stated, including "on request" where the manufacturer says so explicitly), "not published" (no mention found), "no" (the manufacturer cites another reference or states that the standard does not apply), and "out of scope" (walk-behind machines, outside the standard's remit).

Three limits. Public documentation changes: a manufacturer may have obtained a certification without yet publishing it, or may have published it in a document we did not find. We do not verify whether the stated conformity is genuine: we measure transparency, not safety. And the sample is our own database, which covers most of the models distributed in Europe and North America, but not the whole market. For these reasons we do not publish a named list of the "not published" models; we publish the aggregates, and the names of the manufacturers that do publish, which is positive and verifiable information.

The results: a silent majority

Of 101 models, 13 publish an IEC 63327 conformity or certification (13%), 83 publish nothing (82%), 1 cites another reference, and 4 are out of scope. In other words, for nearly eight robots in ten, a buyer cannot tell from the public documentation whether the machine has been assessed against the safety standard that applies to it.

The silence is not specific to safety: 27 of the models rated "not published" on IEC 63327 do publish other certifications, ISO 9001, ISO 27001, CE marking, IP protection rating, SOC 2. Manufacturers know how to communicate about their certifications; they do not do so, or not yet, for this one, either because they do not hold it, because they do not consider it commercially useful, or because buyer demand has not yet made it necessary.

By robot family and by country of origin

Transparency varies widely by machine family and by the manufacturer's origin.

Autonomous floor scrubbers, the oldest family and the one most widely deployed in the presence of the public, publish the most; sweepers, often designed for warehouses and industrial sites, almost never; vacuums, light machines for offices and hotels, slightly more than sweepers.

German manufacturers, whose roots lie in ride-on cleaning machines and who are used to machinery safety standards, publish for the majority of their models. Chinese manufacturers, who account for half the models in the database and most of the world's volumes, rarely publish, apart from a few flagship models. The American and Singaporean manufacturers in our sample do not publish. The manufacturers that publish are: Kärcher (4 models), Gausium (3 models), Nexaro (2 models), Pudu (1 model), Cleanfix (1 model), Hako (1 model), Adlatus (1 model).

"Not published" is not "non-compliant"

This needs to be stated plainly: not finding a mention of IEC 63327 in a robot's public documentation does not mean the robot is non-compliant, nor that it is dangerous. Several manufacturers in our database supply their declaration of conformity on request, as part of a tender; others have had their machines certified without promoting it; others still are in the middle of the assessment process. What this barometer measures is transparency, that is, how easily a buyer can check for themselves before having to ask. And that transparency is currently low.

We will update this study every year, and on simple request, with the supporting document, we will correct the category of any model whose manufacturer publishes its conformity.

What the buyer should ask for

• The IEC 63327 (or EN IEC 63327) declaration of conformity for the exact model, with its version, signed by the manufacturer; and, where one exists, the third-party certification certificate (TÜV, DEKRA, UL or equivalent) with its number.
• The test report or a summary of it: which detection tests (low obstacles, people lying on the floor, drops, transparent glazing) were passed, and at what speed.
• Conformity to the general standard IEC 60335-2-72 (commercial floor treatment machines) and CE marking with the corresponding EU declaration.
• Behaviour on failure: what the robot does if a sensor fails, if the Wi-Fi drops, or if the battery runs low halfway through a run.
• Operating instructions for use in the presence of the public: speed, warning signals, restricted zones, training of cleaning operatives; the standard covers the machine, not the organisation of the site, which remains the operator's responsibility.
• A contractual clause: delivery of these documents before commissioning, and their update with every major software release. Our cleaning specification template and our guide to cleaning tenders both include a line on this point.

What we do with this data

Our guide to commercial cleaning robots compares every model in the database on measurable criteria; the IEC 63327 conformity data will be added model by model, as "published / on request / not published", at the next update of the table. For the robots we operate, we ask the manufacturer for the declaration of conformity and keep it available for our clients; our cobotics page describes how the organisation of the site complements the safety of the machine. This study is free to reuse with attribution; the aggregated data is in the PDF below.

The barometer as a PDF (methodology and aggregates)

Free to use, no registration. The methodology, the aggregates by category, by family and by country of origin, and the buyer's checklist, on two pages, free to reuse with attribution. Download (PDF, in French) → All our templates are gathered on the cleaning templates download page.