The paper presents an update on the international standardization activities in emerging areas of service robotics; two areas of activity are described, namely, safety of personal care robots, and medical robot safety and essential performance. The personal care robot safety work has reached the DIS balloting stage, and the standard considers issues that must be addressed by robot designers and manufacturers to reduce risk; these include hazards due to robot shape, robot motion, incorrect autonomous actions, etc. The medical robot standardization work focuses on existing safety regulations for medical electrical equipment, and how these may be extended to cover robots intended to perform surgery, rehabilitation, medical diagnosis and treatment. The key issues that medical robots bring to the medical electrical equipment area are their autonomous capabilities which make the task of formulating basic safety and essential performance requirements quite unique and challenging.