Glossary

From the company itself: its official website, announcements or data sheet. The strongest grade, but still a company claim.

From reliable media reports or measurements taken at a demonstration, without confirmation from the company.

From anonymous sources, social media or speculative articles. Recorded so it can be tracked, never mixed with facts.

Calculated or estimated by Wingchiki, for example by comparing videos. Shown only when nothing better exists.

① Concept → ② Prototype → ③ Pilot → ④ Production → ⑤ On sale. Discontinued robots sit outside the five steps. A stage is Wingchiki's reading of public evidence, not a shipment count.

Only renders or announcements exist; no working robot has been shown.

A working prototype has been shown, but it has not gone into customer sites.

Being trialled at real customer sites such as factories or warehouses.

Volume production has started on a line, or the robot is being delivered in volume.

A price is public and ordinary customers can order it.

A humanoid that walks on two legs. It can use stairs and thresholds built for people, but balance control is hard and costs are higher.

An upper body with two arms and a head on a wheeled base instead of legs. Stable on flat factory and warehouse floors, so it tends to reach the field sooner than bipeds.

The number of joint axes that can move independently. More DoF allows more varied motion but makes control harder.

The maximum weight the robot can lift or carry. Makers differ on whether it is per arm or for both arms.

How long the robot can work on one battery charge. It varies a lot with how hard the work is.

The drive unit that moves a joint. Usually a joint module that combines motor, reducer, sensors and driver, and one of the largest shares of a humanoid's cost.

An actuator that turns a joint around an axis, used in shoulders, elbows and hips.

An actuator that turns motor rotation into pushing and pulling motion, used where large force is needed, such as knees and ankles. A roller screw or ball screw sits inside.

Slows a motor's fast rotation while raising torque. Humanoids mostly use harmonic and planetary reducers.

A reducer in which a thin metal gear flexes as it meshes. Small, light and with little backlash, so it is common in arm and wrist joints.

A reducer in which small gears orbit a central gear. Shock-resistant and relatively cheap, so it is common in leg joints.

Rollers around a threaded shaft turn rotation into linear motion. It carries more force than a ball screw, so it is used in linear actuators. The planetary roller screw is the main type.

An actuator design with a low gear ratio. The motor feels outside forces directly, so it handles impacts well and moves smoothly. Common in legged robots such as Unitree's.

The part that grasps and handles objects. The number of fingers, degrees of freedom per hand and tactile sensing decide which tasks it can do.

A simple hand that holds objects with two or three jaws. Less versatile than a human-like hand, but sturdier and cheaper.

Measures force and pressure on fingers and palms. Used to hold fragile objects and notice slipping.

A sensor that measures distance with lasers, used to map the surroundings and avoid obstacles.

A camera that also measures the distance to each point, used to understand an object's position and shape in 3D.

Bill of materials: the list and cost of parts needed to build one robot. It comes up often in price forecasts.

AI that sees, decides and moves a body in the real world rather than on a screen. Used to refer to a robot's VLM, VLA and whole-body control together.

Vision-Language Model. AI that understands images and language together to read a scene and plan what to do.

Vision-Language-Action. AI that takes images and instructions and turns them into arm and hand motions.

AI that imagines the next scene as video. Used to generate virtual training video or to evaluate the result of an action in advance.

A model that carries out motion goals from higher-level models across all joints without falling. Often learned with reinforcement learning (RL) in simulation; model predictive control (MPC) is also used.

A person moves the robot directly with VR gear or controllers. Used for demos, and the recorded motion becomes training data. When watching a video, check whether the motion is autonomous or teleoperated.

Learning by copying human demonstrations, mainly used to teach hand tasks from teleoperation data.

Moving motions learned in simulation onto a real robot. The challenge is reducing the drop in performance caused by physical differences between the two.