A B C D E F G H I L M P Q R S T V 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.

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

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.

D

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.

E

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

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.

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.

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

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.

M

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.

P

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.

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

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

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.

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.

S

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.

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.

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.

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.

T

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.

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.

V

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.

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.