Sestala publishes the force ceiling every machine in its network holds to

Europe, 20 August 2026

Sestala today published the numeric ceiling every machine in its network must hold to before a studio opens: a 100 N force limit, a 40°C thermal cap, and a stop response of 450 milliseconds. The company publishes the numbers now because no European standard sets them for a machine built to touch a person on purpose, repeatedly, by design. The standard applies everywhere Sestala operates, starting with Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, where the company is still building its network and no studio is yet trading.

The gap is not an oversight. EN ISO 13482:2014, the harmonised standard that covers physical contact between a person and a service robot, sets no numeric pain or injury limit at all: clause 4.3 requires each maker to derive its own criteria and validate the method, and the standard says plainly that no internationally recognised limit exists for this kind of contact. Sestala’s answer is to fix the numbers itself, in writing, and hold every machine in its network to them rather than wait for a committee that has not yet acted.

The ceiling sits in the machine’s safety layer, not in a setting a person or a piece of software can raise. Force above 100 N is refused outright, whatever the session software has planned, and the neck is excluded from the motion path entirely rather than left to a warning. Heat above 40°C at the contact surface is refused the same way. The stop control sits within reach of the person on the table: pressing it halts motion within 450 milliseconds, and the machine stays stopped until the person on the table, and nobody else, says otherwise.

Sestala did not derive the force number alone. Two other machine makers building different hardware for different markets, Rokae and AiTreat’s EMMA, independently arrived at the same 100 N ceiling. Sestala reads that convergence as a better basis for an industry number than any single standard committee could set without machines to test it against, and publishes it for exactly that reason: so a partner, an insurer or a regulator can check any machine in the network against a fixed public number rather than a marketing claim.

“We are publishing the number a brochure would rather leave out,” said Jörg Olbing, founder. “A ceiling that nobody can see isn’t a ceiling. Every machine that carries our name has to hold to this one, in writing, before it ever meets a member.”

The numbers, for reference:

• Force ceiling: 100 N, fixed in the machine’s safety layer, never a user or software setting
• Thermal ceiling: 40°C at the contact surface
• Stop response: motion ceases within 450 ms of the stop control; the machine stays stopped until the person on the table says otherwise
• Motion path: no cervical or neck work, enforced in the machine’s hardware geometry
• Operation: attended only, a person present whenever a session runs
• Markets: Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom; no studio is yet trading

Sestala builds and runs precision recovery - machine recovery sessions delivered to a standard its founder would lie down on himself, planned at three sessions a day and honest about both numbers.