01 / Glossary
Robotics glossary
60 terms across robot types, technical concepts, commercial language, and safety standards. Standards citations included where a published standard defines the term.
8 robot types14 technical concepts18 commercial terms20 safety & standards
A
- Accuracy (robot)The closeness of agreement between a commanded pose and the mean of the poses the robot actually attains when approaching from the same direction.Technical concepts
- AGV (automated guided vehicle)A driverless vehicle that follows a fixed guidance system such as magnetic tape, embedded wire, floor-mounted QR markers, or reflector-based laser triangulation.Robot types
- AMR (autonomous mobile robot)A mobile robot that navigates a facility using onboard sensors and a software map rather than fixed physical guidance.Robot types
- ANSI/RIA R15.06ANSI/RIA R15.06 is the American national standard for industrial robot and robot system safety and is the US adoption of ISO 10218 Parts 1 and 2.Safety & standards
C
- Certified pre-owned (robotics)A used robot that has been inspected, refurbished as needed, and resold with some form of warranty or performance guarantee, typically by the original manufacturer or an authorized reseller.Commercial terms
- Cobot (collaborative robot)An industrial robot designed for collaborative operation, in which the robot system and a human can share a workspace during production.Robot types
- Collaborative workspaceThe collaborative workspace is the defined portion of the safeguarded space where a robot system and a person can perform tasks concurrently during production operation.Safety & standards
- Cycle timeThe time a robot or workcell takes to complete one full unit of work, from the start of one part to the start of the next.Commercial terms
D
- Degrees of freedom (DOF)The number of independent motion variables a mechanism has, which for serial robot arms usually equals the number of actuated joints.Technical concepts
- Delta robotA parallel-kinematic robot in which three lightweight arms connect a fixed base to a common end platform.Robot types
- Digital twinA virtual model of a physical robot, cell, or facility that is kept synchronized with data from the real system.Technical concepts
E
- Emergency stop (e-stop)An emergency stop is a manually actuated function, designed to ISO 13850, that halts hazardous motion in an emergency and overrides all other operations.Safety & standards
- Enabling deviceAn enabling device is a manually operated control, typically a three-position switch on a teach pendant, that permits robot motion only while held in the center-enabled position; both releasing it and squeezing it fully stop motion.Safety & standards
- End effectorThe device mounted at the mechanical interface of a robot arm that performs the task: a gripper, vacuum cup array, welding torch, screwdriver, dispensing head, or sensor package.Technical concepts
F
- Fleet management (robotics)Software that coordinates multiple mobile robots operating in the same facility: allocating tasks, managing traffic at intersections and narrow aisles, scheduling charging, and interfacing with warehouse or manufacturing execution systems.Technical concepts
- Force/torque sensorA transducer, usually mounted between the robot wrist and the end effector, that measures the forces and torques acting on the tool, commonly along three force and three torque axes.Technical concepts
H
- Hand guidingHand guiding is a collaborative operating method in which an operator moves the robot by applying force directly to a hand-guiding device at or near the end-effector, with the robot in a safety-rated reduced-speed state.Safety & standards
- Humanoid robotA robot with a human-like form factor, typically a bipedal lower body, an articulated torso, two arms, and hands or grippers.Robot types
I
- IEC 62061 (functional safety / SIL)IEC 62061 is the machinery-sector functional safety standard for safety-related electrical, electronic, and programmable electronic control systems, expressing safety-function integrity as a safety integrity level (SIL).Safety & standards
- ISO 10218 (robot safety)ISO 10218 is the core international safety standard for industrial robots, published in two parts: Part 1 covers the robot itself and Part 2 covers the robot system and its integration into a cell.Safety & standards
- ISO 12100 (risk assessment)ISO 12100 establishes the general principles of safety of machinery: hazard identification, risk estimation, risk evaluation, and risk reduction.Safety & standards
- ISO 13849-1 (performance levels)ISO 13849-1 covers the design of safety-related parts of control systems and defines five performance levels, PL a through PL e, that express the ability of a safety function to perform under foreseeable conditions.Safety & standards
- ISO 13850 (emergency stop)ISO 13850 specifies the functional requirements and design principles for the emergency stop function on machinery, independent of the type of energy used.Safety & standards
- ISO 13855 (safeguard positioning)ISO 13855 governs the positioning of safeguards with respect to the approach speeds of parts of the human body, providing the calculation method for the minimum distance a protective device must be placed from a hazard zone.Safety & standards
- ISO 14119 (interlocking devices)ISO 14119 specifies principles for the design and selection of interlocking devices associated with guards, such as the switches on access doors of a robot cell that stop hazardous motion when the guard is opened.Safety & standards
- ISO/TS 15066 (collaborative robots)ISO/TS 15066 is a technical specification that supplemented ISO 10218 with detailed safety requirements for collaborative robot applications, including biomechanical force and pressure limits for contact between a robot and a person.Safety & standards
L
- Lease vs. financeTwo acquisition structures for robot equipment.Commercial terms
- Lockout/tagout (LOTO)Lockout/tagout is the OSHA-regulated practice, codified at 29 CFR 1910.147, of isolating hazardous energy sources and securing them with locks and tags before servicing or maintenance so that equipment cannot be unexpectedly energized.Safety & standards
P
- Payback periodThe time required for the cumulative net savings or earnings from an automation investment to equal its total cost.Commercial terms
- PayloadThe maximum mass a robot can carry at its mechanical interface while meeting its rated performance, including the mass of the end effector and any part being handled.Technical concepts
- Performance level (PL)Performance level is the discrete measure defined in ISO 13849-1 for the ability of a safety-related control function to perform under foreseeable conditions, graded from PL a (lowest) to PL e (highest).Safety & standards
- Pilot programA limited production deployment of a robot system used to validate performance, reliability, and operational fit before a wider rollout.Commercial terms
- Power and force limiting (PFL)Power and force limiting is the collaborative operating method in which the robot is designed so that incidental contact with a person does not exceed defined biomechanical force and pressure limits, either through inherently limited actuators or safety-rated force control.Safety & standards
- Proof of concept (PoC)A short, controlled demonstration that a robot can perform a specific task with representative parts, typically run in a lab, demo cell, or vendor facility rather than in production.Commercial terms
R
- ReachThe maximum distance a robot arm can extend from its base axis to its wrist center or tool flange, which bounds the working envelope.Technical concepts
- RepeatabilityThe closeness of agreement between the positions a robot actually attains when commanded to the same pose repeatedly under the same conditions.Technical concepts
- Return on investment (ROI)A measure of the financial benefit of an automation project relative to its cost, expressed as the net gain divided by the total investment.Commercial terms
- Risk assessmentRisk assessment is the systematic process, defined for machinery by ISO 12100, of identifying hazards, estimating and evaluating the associated risks, and determining whether risk reduction is required.Safety & standards
- Robotics service provider (RSP)A company that delivers robotics capability as an ongoing service, covering some combination of deployment, operation, monitoring, maintenance, and fleet support.Commercial terms
- Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS)A commercial model in which robots are provided under a subscription or usage-based contract rather than purchased outright.Commercial terms
S
- Safeguarded spaceThe safeguarded space is the volume defined by the perimeter safeguarding of a robot cell — fences, interlocked doors, light curtains, and scanners — within which the robot's hazardous motion is contained.Safety & standards
- Safety-rated monitored stopA safety-rated monitored stop is a collaborative operating method in which the robot halts and the stop condition is continuously monitored by the safety system while a person is in the collaborative workspace, without removing drive power.Safety & standards
- SCARA robotA Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm, an arm architecture with two rotary joints on parallel vertical axes plus a vertical linear axis, typically giving 4 degrees of freedom.Robot types
- Service-level agreement (SLA)A contractual commitment defining the level of service a robot vendor or service provider must deliver, such as availability targets, support response and resolution times, and spare-parts turnaround.Commercial terms
- Sim-to-realThe practice of developing or training robot control policies in physics simulation and then transferring them to physical hardware.Technical concepts
- SLAMSimultaneous localization and mapping, a class of algorithms by which a robot builds a map of an unknown environment while estimating its own position within that map at the same time.Technical concepts
- Speed and separation monitoring (SSM)Speed and separation monitoring is one of the four collaborative operating methods defined in the ISO 10218 framework, in which the robot system maintains a protective separation distance from any person in the collaborative workspace.Safety & standards
- Systems integratorA firm that designs, builds, installs, and commissions complete automation systems from components supplied by robot manufacturers and other vendors.Commercial terms
T
- Takt timeThe pace at which units must be completed to meet customer demand, calculated by dividing available production time by required output.Commercial terms
- Teach pendantA handheld control unit used to jog a robot, record waypoints, edit programs, and monitor status from inside or near the cell.Technical concepts
- ThroughputThe rate at which a system produces completed units or handles items over a period of time.Commercial terms
- Total cost of ownership (TCO)The full cost of acquiring and operating a robot system over its useful life, not just the purchase price.Commercial terms