For sixty years, we knew exactly how to keep a robot safe. It came down to one simple idea: keep people out.
A robot used to wait for instructions. It worked because it was predictable, repetitive, and blind. Now imagine one deciding what happens next.
That assumption is now breaking. The robot is leaving the cage. AI is giving it the ability to see, plan, and act without a script or program for every move. every move.
These machines are moving into warehouses, restaurants, factories, and homes, working alongside the people the cage was built to keep away.
But what replaces the cage?
The machines that changed the world all faced a version of the same problem: how do you make something dangerous safe enough to use around people?
Every dangerous machine in the past, from the steam boiler to the elevator to the car, won its place the same way. Their risks became something people could inspect, compare, and eventually price.
Their risk became legible.
Robot risk isn't there yet.
A robot working around people has to be compliant and insured from day one. But a safety assessment can only tell you what was true when the robot was assessed.
It cannot tell you what happened after the machine went to work: how often it stopped, how often a person had to intervene, what changed after an update, or whether the same problem appeared across deployments.
That matters because insurers cannot price what they cannot measure. And without a history of real-world performance, every new deployment starts with uncertainty.
The missing piece is evidence: a record of what the robot actually did in service, measured in a way that different deployments can be compared.
Once that record exists, the pieces can start reinforcing one another.
It can help insurers price risk, give standards bodies better data, and give deployers a track record they can take to their next renewal.
We call this the Evidence Loop.
This article lays out 17 things robot makers, deployers, insurers, standards bodies, and policymakers can do by 2030 to start the loop that replaces the cage.
It is published open for review: we invite you to shape it and join its reviewers.