Plain talk, with jokes

A plant manager's glossary: cobot, AMR, end effector, and other words people use to sound expensive

October 1, 2026 · 4 min read

Automation has a vocabulary problem. Half the words mean something precise and the other half are marketing. Here is the working glossary, written for someone who runs a plant and would like to understand the quote without pretending.

The short answer

You need about twenty words to follow a robot conversation and catch the places where it is going wrong. Here they are, in roughly the order you will meet them, with the plain meaning and the catch.

The machines

Industrial robot: an arm, usually six joints, that goes where it is told, fast and hard, behind guarding. The workhorse since the first Unimate went to work at a General Motors plant in 1961, back when the Jetsons were still a year away from airing.

Collaborative robot, or cobot: an arm with power and force limiting and other features that make it possible, after a risk assessment, for people to work near it without a fence. The catch is the word possible. The arm is collaborative. The application is only collaborative if the gripper, the part, the speed and the layout pass the assessment.

AMR, autonomous mobile robot: a vehicle that carries its own map, plans its own path and goes around you. AGV, automated guided vehicle: a vehicle that follows tape, wire or reflectors and stops when you are in the way. People use the two interchangeably. They are not. One is a colleague, the other is a tram.

SCARA: a fast, stiff four axis arm that is wonderful for small parts on a flat plane and nothing else. Delta robot: the spider on the ceiling picking candies at a rate that looks like a special effect. Cartesian or gantry: three straight axes in a frame, the right answer more often than people admit.

Humanoid: a robot shaped like a person. In 2026, a category the matrix tracks and this site does not sell, because the dealer channel barely exists and almost nothing about them is published in a form a buyer can verify. Ask the concierge why and it will tell you plainly.

The parts that do the work

End effector, or end of arm tooling: the gripper, suction cup, torch, sander or camera on the end of the arm. The arm is a very expensive way to move the end effector. On this site we say the gripper is the project, because it usually is.

Payload: what the arm can carry at the wrist, including the gripper. If the brochure says 10 kilograms and your gripper weighs 3, you have a 7 kilogram robot. Reach: how far it can get from its base, which decides whether it can build a full pallet or load the far vise.

Repeatability: how precisely the arm returns to the same place. Accuracy: how close that place is to where you asked. Robots are very repeatable and only somewhat accurate, which is why fixtures matter.

Force torque sensor: the device at the wrist that lets the arm feel how hard it is pressing. The thing that made deburring and sanding automatable.

The numbers

Cycle time: how long one part takes. Takt time: how often a part must come off the line to meet demand. Peak rate: what the line does on its best afternoon, which is the number the cell has to survive. Average rate: the number on the monthly report, which is the number that gets cells undersized.

Payback: the project cost divided by the annual benefit, honest only if the benefit is honest. OEE, overall equipment effectiveness: availability times performance times quality, a useful number that is often quoted and rarely measured.

The paperwork

Risk assessment: the engineering study, under R15.06, ISO 10218, ISO/TS 15066 or R15.08 depending on the machine, that decides what could hurt someone and how it is prevented. Signed by a certified integrator. Not optional, not a formality, not the robot's job.

Integrator: the firm that designs, builds, programs, guards, commissions and services the cell, and signs the assessment. Dealer: the firm that finds and supplies the machine and brings the integrator. On this site those are two different companies on purpose.

Deal registration: a maker's promise that the dealer who found you gets to sell to you. MAP: the minimum price a maker allows advertised. Neither affects what you pay as much as the integration line does.

The words to ignore

Smart, intelligent, AI powered, next generation, turnkey, seamless, Industry 4.0. None of them has a unit of measure. When you hear one, ask the question from the previous section that it is standing in for.

If a quote lands on your desk with words that are not here, paste the confusing sentence to Joe, the concierge on this site, and ask what it means in your plant. He is good at the translation and has no interest in sounding expensive.

Related on this site

• The ten application guides
• A mobile robot is not an arm on wheels
• Collaborative does not mean fenceless
• The gripper is the project
• The equipment matrix