Robot Industry Glossary

A robot at the nanometer scale (1-100 nm), envisioned for medical applications such as cellular repair and targeted drug delivery.

The process of determining a robot’s path from one location to another, including localization, mapping, path planning, and motion execution.

A software framework providing integrated modules for localization, mapping, path planning, and obstacle avoidance.

A fundamental algorithm in robotics for finding the closest point in a dataset, used in path planning (RRT), grasping, and clustering.

A computational model inspired by biological neurons, used in robot perception, control, planning, and learning from demonstration.

Hardware architectures mimicking biological neural networks, enabling ultra-low-power, event-driven perception and control.

Recursive equations of motion for robot dynamics, computing joint torques from link accelerations, velocities, and external forces.

The expected or ideal condition of a robot’s parameters or trajectory, with deviations addressed by feedback control.

Describes a robot whose instantaneous motion is constrained, such as a car-like robot that cannot move sideways, limiting its maneuverability.

Control methods designed for systems with nonlinear dynamics, including sliding mode, adaptive, and feedback linearization techniques.

A bell-shaped probability distribution commonly used to model sensor noise and uncertainty in robot state estimation.

The set of joint velocities that produce zero end-effector motion in a redundant robot, used to optimize secondary objectives like joint limits.

Inverse kinematics solved through iterative numerical methods such as Newton-Raphson and Jacobian pseudoinverse, rather than closed-form solutions.

A joint type providing wobbling motion, used in some parallel robots and specialized robotic devices.