Glossary
Humanoid robotics glossary
Plain-language definitions for the terms you'll meet across the catalog.
- Humanoid robot
- A robot with a human-like body form (typically a head, torso and two arms, often two legs) built to operate in human environments and perform physical tasks.
- Bipedal robot
- A robot that walks on two legs, balancing dynamically like a human — as opposed to wheeled or quadruped designs.
- Degrees of freedom (DoF)
- The number of independent joints/axes a robot (or hand) can move through. More DoF means more dexterity; hands often quote a separate DoF figure.
- Payload
- The weight a robot can carry or manipulate, usually quoted per arm and/or whole-body. A core spec for warehouse and logistics fit.
- Teleoperation
- A human remotely operating the robot in real time (often via VR/motion-capture). Many 'autonomous' demos are partly teleoperated — we flag this.
- Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS)
- RaaS — paying for a robot's work (hourly or monthly) instead of buying it. The dominant commercial model for work-capable humanoids today.
- Vision-language-action (VLA) model
- A VLA model maps camera input plus a language instruction directly to robot actions — the AI approach behind most 2025-26 humanoid autonomy claims.
- Dexterous hand
- A multi-fingered robot hand (often 6-22 DoF) with tactile sensing, enabling fine manipulation beyond a simple gripper.
- End effector
- The tool at the end of a robot arm — a gripper, suction tool or dexterous hand — selected for the task.
- Embodied AI
- AI that perceives and acts through a physical body, learning from real-world interaction rather than text alone.