A B C D E F G H I L M N O P Q R S T U V W Z

A

Actuator

The muscle of a robot: the component that converts electricity, oil pressure or compressed air into movement. Most robots use electric motors with gearboxes.

Agentic AI

AI that does not just answer you but takes actions on its own — browsing, running code, calling other software — over many steps to finish a task you gave it once.

Amp-hour (Ah)

A measure of how much current a battery can supply over time. A 2 Ah pack can hand out 2 amps for one hour, or 1 amp for two hours.

Assembly fixture

A metal jig on a production line that clamps parts in exactly the right position while they are screwed, welded or glued together.

Auto-mapping

The first run where a robot drives around your home and builds a floor plan. It usually takes 20 to 30 minutes and lets you label rooms and set no-go areas in the app.

Automated guided vehicle

A driverless transport vehicle that follows a fixed route marked by magnetic tape, wires in the floor, reflectors or QR codes. If something blocks the path, it stops and waits.

Autonomous mobile robot

A mobile robot that carries a map, works out where it is, and plans its own path. Unlike an AGV it drives around obstacles instead of stopping in front of them.

B

Bin picking

Taking parts one by one out of a box where they lie in a random jumble. It needs 3D vision to find each part and a plan to grab it without hitting the bin.

C

C-rate

How fast a battery is being emptied or filled, measured against its own size. At 1C it empties in one hour, at 2C in thirty minutes, at 5C in twelve minutes.

CAGR

Compound annual growth rate: the steady yearly growth rate that would take a number from its starting value to its ending value over a period, smoothing out the ups and downs in between.

Class 3 vehicle

A US truck weight class covering vehicles rated between 10,001 and 14,000 pounds gross weight, such as heavier work trucks and large vans. Everything lighter includes ordinary cars and pickups.

Collaborative robot

A robot designed to work next to people without a fence, using limited force and speed plus sensors, so a collision hurts nobody. Still needs a safety assessment of the whole application.

Compliance

How much a robot part gives way when it is pushed. A compliant gripper bends around an object instead of forcing it, which is what lets a machine hold an egg.

Covered List

A US government list of equipment judged a national security risk. Products on it cannot get the approval every wireless device needs before it can be sold in the United States.

D

Data crowdsourcing

Paying large numbers of ordinary people, rather than trained staff, to each produce a small piece of a dataset through an app.

Degrees of freedom

The number of independent ways a robot can move. A standard industrial arm has six, enough to put its tool at any position and any angle within reach.

Depth camera

A camera that also measures how far away each pixel is, giving a 3D image. Robots use it to find objects, avoid obstacles and judge grasps.

Depth of discharge

How much of a battery you use before recharging. Running a pack flat every time is a 100 percent depth of discharge and wears it out faster than shallow top-ups.

Dexterous hand

A robot hand with several jointed fingers that bend independently, rather than a simple two- or three-part clamp.

Domestic end product

The federal test for calling something American-made. The product must be built in the US and more than 65% of the cost of its parts must come from US sources.

E

Egocentric data

Video and sensor recordings made from a person's own point of view, usually with a camera worn on the head, so a robot can see a task the way the human doing it saw it.

Emergency stop

The red mushroom button that brings a machine to a halt immediately. It is hardwired, latches when pressed, and must be released and reset deliberately before restart.

Encoder

A sensor on a motor or joint that reports how far it has turned. Without encoders a robot controller would have no idea where its own arm is.

End effector

The tool at the end of a robot arm: a gripper, suction cup, welding torch or screwdriver. It is the part that actually touches the workpiece.

EU AI Act

The European Union's AI law, which sorts AI systems by risk level and puts the heaviest obligations on uses like hiring, credit scoring and biometric identification.

F

Fin Ray effect

A finger shape that bends towards whatever pushes on it, instead of away. Robot makers use it so a soft finger wraps around an object by itself, with no extra motors.

Fine-tuning

Taking an AI model that already knows a lot and giving it a small amount of extra, specific practice so it handles one particular job well.

Fire retardant

A chemical mix, usually dyed red, that is sprayed on plants and buildings so they do not catch fire easily. It works before the flames arrive, unlike water.

Force-torque sensor

A sensor, usually in the robot wrist, that measures how hard the tool is pushed and twisted in all directions. It lets a robot feel contact instead of just following a path.

G

Gantry robot

A robot whose tools hang from an overhead frame and slide along rails, instead of sitting on a base and swinging an arm. Good for covering a fixed rectangular work area precisely.

Gripper

The hand of a robot. Common types are two jaws that close on a part, a vacuum cup that sucks it up, magnets for steel, and soft rubber fingers for fragile goods.

H

Harmonic drive

A compact gearbox that gives a very large speed reduction in one thin stage with almost no play. It sits in the joints of most industrial and humanoid robot arms.

Hot-swappable battery

A battery pack that can be pulled out and replaced while the machine keeps working, instead of plugging the whole machine into a wall for hours.

Human-in-the-loop

A setup where a person stays part of the action and makes the decisions, while the machine carries them out. The robot is not acting on its own.

Humanoid robot

A robot built roughly like a person: two legs, two arms, a head with cameras. The point is to work in rooms, stairs and machines that were designed for humans.

Hybrid locomotion

When one robot moves in two or more different ways - for example flying and hopping - and switches between them to save energy or get past an obstacle.

I

Imitation learning

Teaching a robot by showing it. A human performs the task, often by remote control, and the robot learns to copy the mapping from what it sees to what it should do.

Inertial measurement unit

A small chip that senses acceleration and rotation. It tells a robot how it is tilting and turning, which is what keeps drones and walking robots upright.

Inverse kinematics

The maths that turns a desired tool position into the joint angles needed to get there. Going the other way, from joint angles to tool position, is forward kinematics.

ISO 10218

The core international safety standard for industrial robots. Part 1 covers the robot itself, part 2 covers the complete installation with tools, fences and conveyors.

ISO/TS 15066

The technical specification that fills in the detail for collaborative robots, above all how much force and pressure a robot may apply to each part of the human body.

L

Latency

The delay between telling a machine to do something and it actually happening. Measured in fractions of a second, but in a fight it decides who lands first.

LiDAR

A sensor that fires laser pulses and measures how long they take to come back, producing a precise 3D picture of the surroundings. Used for navigation and for safety scanning.

Local incident technician

A worker a driverless car company must send to the scene when one of its cars crashes, gets stuck or blocks the road. California's new law requires it.

Locomanipulation

Walking and handling objects as one combined problem rather than two separate ones, so the robot moves its whole body to reach and grasp things.

M

Microphone array

A group of microphones spread a few centimetres apart. By comparing which one hears a sound first, software can work out which direction the sound came from.

Model predictive control

A control method that simulates the next second or so of motion, picks the best command sequence, applies only the first step, then repeats. Good at handling limits and balance.

Motion planning

Working out a collision-free route for a robot from where it is to where it needs to be, respecting obstacles, joint limits and, for vehicles, how the machine can steer.

MoveIt

An open-source software framework that plans and executes the movements of robot arms. It runs on top of ROS and is the most widely used motion planning package in robotics research and industry.

N

Newton-metre (Nm)

The standard unit of torque, or turning force. One newton-metre is the twist you get pushing with about 0.1 kg of force on the end of a one-metre lever; robot joints are rated in Nm to say how hard they can swing or lift.

Nominal voltage

The average working voltage a cell or pack is labelled with. A lithium-ion cell is usually called 3.6 volts, though it sits higher when full and lower when nearly empty.

O

Operational stock

The estimated number of robots still in active service worldwide, as opposed to the number sold or installed in a single year.

P

Pascal (Pa)

A unit of pressure that robot vacuum brands use to advertise suction. A bigger number means the fan can pull harder, but it does not promise a cleaner carpet.

Payload

The maximum mass a robot may carry at its wrist, including the gripper and any cables. Exceeding it costs accuracy and shortens the life of the joints.

Physical AI

The industry term for software that controls machines moving in the real world, such as robots and cars, rather than just answering questions on a screen.

PID controller

The workhorse feedback rule: look at the error between target and actual value, and correct based on how big it is, how long it has lasted and how fast it is changing.

Q

Quadcopter

A drone with four propellers, usually one at each corner. It steers by speeding up some propellers and slowing others, which tilts the whole body.

Quadruped robot

A four-legged robot. Legs let it climb stairs, cross rubble and step over cables where wheels get stuck. Used for inspection rounds in plants and on construction sites.

R

Recursive self-improvement

When AI systems are used to build the next, better generation of AI systems, so each round of progress speeds up the next one.

Regulatory sandbox

A controlled legal space where a company can test a new technology on real users for a limited time, under a regulator's supervision and with some normal rules relaxed.

Reinforcement learning

Training by trial and error: the robot tries actions, gets a numerical reward when things go well, and gradually learns a policy that earns the most reward.

Reshoring

Moving production that a company had previously sent abroad back to its home country. Nearshoring is the softer version: moving it to a nearby country instead.

Retargeting

Reshaping a person's recorded movement so a robot with different-sized limbs can copy it without falling over or hitting its own joint limits.

Robot constitution

A written list of behaviour rules a robot's AI brain checks its planned action against before doing it — a modern, much longer attempt at what Asimov's laws were meant to be.

Robot Operating System

Not an operating system but a free software framework that lets the parts of a robot program talk to each other. Widely used in research and increasingly in products.

Robotaxi

A taxi with no human driver. You book it on a phone app, it arrives empty, and software does all the steering, braking and route planning.

Roller mop

A spinning cloth cylinder on the underside of a robot vacuum that scrubs the floor, instead of a flat damp pad that is dragged along.

S

Scaling law

A measured pattern showing how much better an AI model gets each time you double the training data or compute, precise enough to predict results before training.

SCARA robot

A fast four-axis arm whose joints rotate around vertical axes, so it is stiff up and down but flexible sideways. Standard machine for assembling small parts.

Self-emptying dock

A charging base with its own vacuum and dust bag that sucks the robot's small bin empty after each clean, so you deal with it every few months instead of daily.

Sensor fusion

Combining several sensors so their weaknesses cancel out. A robot mixes lidar, camera, wheel counts and an inertial sensor to get one position estimate better than any single source.

Shared autonomy

A split where the robot handles some jobs by itself, usually balance and walking, while a human decides the rest, such as where the hands go.

Sim-to-real transfer

Getting a skill learned in simulation to work on a real machine. Simulators are fast and safe, but friction, delays and sensor noise never match reality exactly.

Single-board computer

A whole small computer on one circuit board, cheap and about the size of a credit card. Hobby boards like the Raspberry Pi are the best-known example.

SLAM

Simultaneous localisation and mapping: a robot builds a map of an unknown space while working out its own position in that map at the same time. Your robot vacuum does this.

Software development kit (SDK)

The toolkit a maker supplies so customers can write their own programs for a machine. Without it, you can only use the behaviours the maker built in.

Spot fire

A small new fire started by a burning ember that the wind carried ahead of the main fire. Spot fires can land far from the flame front, sometimes inside a neighborhood.

T

Tactile sensor

A sensor that lets a robot feel contact and pressure, usually in a fingertip or palm, so it knows it has actually gripped something and how hard.

Teach pendant

The handheld control box used to program and jog an industrial robot. It has a screen, motion keys and a dead-man switch that must be held at a middle position.

Teleoperation

A human operating a robot from a distance, through a joystick, a control arm or a VR headset. Used where autonomy is not good enough, and to record training data.

Thermal runaway

A lithium battery fault where heat makes the cell produce more heat, until it smokes or burns. It can start from damage, overheating, water, overcharging, or a factory defect.

TOPS

Trillions of operations per second, a rough measure of how much AI number-crunching a chip can do. Higher TOPS means bigger neural networks can run on the device instead of in the cloud.

U

Ultrasonic carpet sensor

A small sound-based sensor under a robot vacuum that pings the floor and uses the echo to tell carpet from hard floor, so the machine knows when to lift or cover its mop.

V

Vacuum gripper

A robot hand that holds things by sucking air out of rubber cups pressed against a surface. Air pressure outside does the lifting, so it only needs to touch one side of the object.

Vision-language-action model

A neural network that takes camera images plus an instruction in plain English and outputs robot movements directly, such as: pick up the red cup and put it in the sink.

Voiceprint

A stored pattern of how one person's voice sounds, used by software to recognise them again later.

W

Watt-hour (Wh)

A measure of how much energy a battery holds. Multiply the volts on the label by the amp-hours to get it. It lets you compare two packs that run at different voltages.

Wildland–urban interface

The zone where houses and neighborhoods meet open wildland such as forest, brush or grass. It is where most wildfire damage to buildings happens.

Z

Zero moment point

A balance criterion for walking robots: the point on the floor where the forces acting on the robot produce no tipping moment. Keep it inside the feet and the robot does not fall.

Zero-shot generalization

When a trained AI system handles a situation, place or object it never saw during training, with no extra practice or adjustment first.