A Complete Glossary of Humanoid Robotics Terms

A single reference covering the terms that come up across hardware, software, and industry discussion.

Hardware terms

Actuator: the motor-and-gearing combination that drives a joint's movement. Degrees of freedom (DoF): the number of independent ways a joint or robot can move. Payload: the maximum weight a robot or gripper can reliably handle. Torque density: how much torque an actuator produces relative to its own weight.

Software and AI terms

Policy: the function (often a neural network) mapping sensor input to robot action. Sim-to-real gap: the performance difference between a robot's simulated and real-world behavior. Teleoperation: direct human control of a robot in real time, as opposed to autonomous operation. VLA model: a vision-language-action model unifying perception, language understanding, and motor control in one system.

Industry terms

RaaS (Robotics-as-a-Service): a subscription or usage-based access model for robots, rather than an outright purchase. TAM (total addressable market): a theoretical ceiling estimate of a market's total possible revenue under full, favorable adoption. TCO (total cost of ownership): the complete cost of a robot over its working life, not just its purchase price.