Open standards for AI that can apply force.
When AI gets a body, a hallucination is no longer a wrong answer — it is a physical action. PAIG is an open, community technical committee drafting vendor-neutral standards for autonomous embodied AI: a Force Continuum, an "ISO 42001 for Robotics" (working title), and the API that makes them provable.
Standardization of the governance of autonomous embodied AI — humanoids, general-purpose mobile manipulators, and any AI system that can move and apply force among people: how much force such a system may be authorized to apply, how much human control that force requires, the management system and technical controls that make the coupling real, and the vendor-neutral interface that makes it enforceable and provable after the fact.
- A graduated force-authorization scale (PAFC-0…5) coupled to human-control tiers (HC-0…3)
- A management system + six technical controls for embodied AI ("ISO 42001 for Robotics")
- A governance API: identity, attestation, force-level authorization, tamper-evident logs, accountability
- Mappings to ISO 10218:2025, ISO 13482, IEC 61508 / ISO 13849, the EU Machinery Regulation 2023/1230, the EU AI Act, and ISO/IEC 42001
- Replacing or reissuing existing physical-safety standards — PAIG complements and extends them
- Certification or conformity marks — these are drafts for comment, not a certification scheme
- Weapons development — autonomous lethal force is prohibited by the standard itself (PAFC-5 / rule R4)
- Legal advice
The gap
Real, current standards cover parts of the problem — and stop exactly where autonomous humanoids begin.
ISO 10218:2025 · ISO 13482
Govern industrial, collaborative, and gentle service robots — force limits, safety-rated stops. They assume defined tasks, not open-world autonomy taking real-time commands.
EU Machinery Reg. 2023/1230 · EU AI Act
From 2027, add AI & self-evolving-behaviour review and human oversight. A conformity regime — not a graduated force-authorization scale.
What's missing
How much force a machine may apply and how much human control it requires — and a universal, provable way to answer, after an incident, what it was told, what it decided, and who was accountable.
Structure — working areas
Proposed structure, to be ratified at Session 1. Four working areas on the technical-committee pattern; each maintains a living draft in the document register. Confirmed participants today: 0 — every convenor seat is open, and the first people in are founding members.
The Force Continuum (PAFC)
Embodied AI Governance ("ISO 42001 for Robotics")
Physical AI Governance API
Working Group & Governance
Document register
Deliverables under development. Every document is an open draft — versioned in the repository, free to read, comment on, and implement.
| Doc ID | Title | Working area | Stage | Version | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PAIG-1 | Physical AI Force Continuum (PAFC) | WG-1 · Core | RFC — open for comment ↗ | v0.1 | · Comment on RFC #1 ↗ · Source ↗ |
| PAIG-2 | Embodied AI Governance Standard ("ISO 42001 for Robotics") | WG-2 · Standard | Working Draft | v0.1 | · Source ↗ |
| PAIG-3 | Physical AI Governance API | WG-3 · Interop | Working Draft | v0.1 | · Source ↗ |
| PAIG-0 | Working Group & Governance | WG-0 · Process | Forming | v0.1 | · Source ↗ |
A plain-language analogue of the ISO stage ladder (WD → CD/DIS → IS). "Forming" marks a process document awaiting ratification at the first session. Nothing here is a published ISO standard or a certification — these are community drafts designed to complement ISO 10218:2025, ISO 13482, the EU Machinery Regulation 2023/1230, the EU AI Act, and ISO/IEC 42001.
Documents
The living drafts, in full. Comments and pull requests welcome via the repository.
Participation & membership
An open committee: participation is free and the process is public. Cognita GRC is the steward, not the owner — the standard text is CC BY 4.0 and the API specification is Apache-2.0. We're forming the working group now to take v0.1 to a citable standard.
Why join now: the first participants shape the Force Continuum before it hardens — convenor seats are open, and contributors are credited by name in the documents they shape.
Open a Join Issue (a two-field form) or send one email — role + one line on your background.
You're invited to the first working session: ratify scope, assign document leads, set cadence.
Comment on the PAIG-1 RFC — the levels, the coupling rule, the open questions — before v0.2 is cut.
Convening steward: Guillaume Kaldjob · Cognita GRC · [email protected] — email carries the same standing as a GitHub Issue. How decisions are made: Process & meetings.
Process & meetings
How the committee decides — rough consensus, evidence over opinion, public-safety first. The full process document is PAIG-0, to be ratified at the first session.
Material safety decisions require sign-off from ≥ 2 functional-safety and ≥ 1 regulatory participant. Substantive changes arrive as pull requests with a linked Issue + rationale.
- Ratify scope + principles.
- Force Continuum v0.1 (PAIG-1) — adopt/refine the PAFC levels + Force–Control Coupling as the first RFC.
- Assign leads per document.
- Decide the conformance/attestation model (self vs. third-party) and the minimal audit-log schema.
- Set cadence + the v0.2 milestone.
Drafts published; call for participants.
Force Continuum RFC ratified; minimal audit-log schema; reference OpenAPI spec.
Pilot with ≥1 robotics vendor; map to EU MR 2023/1230 + EU AI Act.
Citable standard + open reference implementation.