Embodied AI Glossary中文14Industry Jargon & Business
Making sense of press releases, pitch decks, and group-chat slang: embodiment, ‘big/small brain,’ data flywheels, mass production, and more. · 149 terms
- 14.1Industry map: who does what13
- 14.2The debate over approaches10
- 14.3Reading demos and leaderboards10
- 14.4Papers, conferences, and journals12
- 14.5Expos, competitions, and viral moments18
- 14.6Mass production and supply chains15
- 14.7Deployment and factory automation19
- 14.8Business models and markets20
- 14.9Hype cycles, funding, and IPOs20
- 14.10Policy and standards12
14.1Industry map: who does what
With the tech and companies covered, map the industry: how the supply chain breaks down, and what each player does.
- A way of splitting an industry into components, complete products, and end applications, following the order of production.
- Robot Body Maker本体厂商A company that designs and manufactures a robot's complete physical hardware, such as a humanoid or quadruped maker.
- A company that builds general-purpose robot models but doesn't manufacture the robot hardware itself.
- Three Pillars of Embodied AI: Data, Model, Embodiment具身智能三要素（数据 / 模型 / 本体）An industry shorthand for breaking embodied AI down into three parts: data, model, and embodiment.
- Embodied AI Data Service Provider具身数据服务商（数据采集服务商）A company whose main business is collecting, labeling, and selling training data for robot companies.
- Not betting on who builds the best robot, but supplying everyone who's trying to build one.
- NVIDIA Three-Computer Solution英伟达三台计算机NVIDIA's framework splitting robot development into three “computers”: for training, simulation, and deployment.
- Big Four of Industrial Robotics工业机器人四大家族The industry's collective name for four long-established industrial-robot giants: FANUC, ABB, KUKA, and Yaskawa.
- System Integrator系统集成商A company that assembles robots, tooling, and software into a complete production-line solution for a customer.
- The party with a real-world use case who actually uses the robot and pays for it — the factory, warehouse, or store.
- Automakers Entering Humanoid Robotics车企造人形（车企入局）Car companies using their supply chains and self-driving know-how to build humanoid robots.
- The trend, since 2023, of autonomous-driving engineers and founders switching into embodied-AI robotics.
- University / Big-Tech / Autonomous-Driving Founder Lineage高校系 / 大厂系 / 智驾系An informal three-way grouping of embodied-AI startups by their founders' professional background.
14.2The debate over approaches
Now see what the players disagree on: humanoid or not, real robots or sim, integrated or decoupled, and the path to generality.
- The industry's unresolved disagreement over which technical approach embodied AI should take.
- The ongoing debate over what shape a general-purpose robot should take, and whether it should move on wheels or legs.
- The debate over whether robot training data should mainly come from real robots or from simulation.
- Developing the robot body, its core components, control, and the large model all in-house rather than buying them in.
- Hardware and algorithms designed and tuned together by the same party, delivered as one combined solution.
- Hardware-Software Decoupling软硬解耦（模型与本体解耦）The robot's intelligence isn't tied to one specific hardware platform, and can run on different robots.
- Using a single embodied-AI model to control many different kinds of robot hardware.
- Making a robot work well in one narrow scenario first, then gradually broadening it toward generality.
- AgiBot G1–G5 Embodied-AI Roadmap智元 G1–G5 技术路线AgiBot's five-level roadmap for how a robot's “brain” evolves from hand-coded rules to a fully end-to-end general model.
- Consensus / Non-Consensus共识 / 非共识A judgment most people already agree with is “consensus”; one only a few hold is “non-consensus.”
14.3Reading demos and leaderboards
Judging an approach means judging its results: how to read demos and leaderboards, and spot teleop, editing, or cherry-picking.
- Demo (Demonstration Video)Demo（演示视频）A video companies or teams use to show off a robot's abilities, usually a selected highlight clip.
- The robot carries out a task under its own model's control the whole way through, with no person operating it from behind the scenes.
- Teleoperated Demo遥操作演示A video in which the robot is actually being controlled in real time by a person offstage, not making decisions on its own.
- Remote Teleoperation Takeover远程接管（人工兜底）When a robot fails or hits something unfamiliar, a remote human operator takes over to finish the task.
- Pre-Programmed (Choreographed) Motion预编程动作（动作编排）A fixed motion sequence designed in advance and replayed by the robot, not decided on the spot.
- Playback Speed Label倍速 / 原速标注The “1x,” “2x,” or “10x” marker in the corner of a robot demo video showing its true speed.
- Edited Demo剪辑 DemoA robot demonstration video that has been cut, spliced together, or sped up.
- A robot demo filmed from start to finish in a single continuous shot, with no cuts.
- Cherry-pickingcherry-pick（挑结果）Showing only the best-looking results out of many attempts while hiding failures and the average performance.
- Optimizing hard for one benchmark's score in a way that inflates it without necessarily improving real ability.
14.4Papers, conferences, and journals
More rigorous evidence than a demo lives in papers: preprints, top-tier AI conferences, and the main robotics conferences and journals.
- arXiv PreprintarXiv 预印本A paper version posted publicly before formal publication; most AI-field papers post to arXiv first.
- Top-tier Conferences & Journals (CCF-A Venues)顶会 / 顶刊（CCF-A）The conferences and journals widely seen as most influential in a field, commonly benchmarked in China against the CCF's A-tier list.
- NeurIPS / ICML / ICLRNeurIPS / ICML / ICLR（机器学习三大会）The three most influential annual academic conferences in machine learning.
- CVPR / ICCV / ECCVCVPR / ICCV / ECCV（计算机视觉三大会）The three most influential international academic conferences in computer vision.
- The flagship annual robotics conference hosted by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.
- A major annual robotics conference on par with ICRA, held each fall.
- An annual international academic conference focused on the intersection of robotics and machine learning.
- A single-track top academic robotics conference held once a year.
- The top robotics-focused journal published under the Science family of journals.
- IEEE T-RO / IJRR / RA-LT-RO / IJRR / RA-L（机器人期刊）The three journals most often cited in robotics: T-RO, IJRR, and RA-L.
- An international conference run by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, dedicated specifically to humanoid robots.
- China Embodied AI Conference中国具身智能大会（CEAI）China's domestic annual academic conference focused specifically on embodied AI.
14.5Expos, competitions, and viral moments
Beyond academic conferences, the public stage: expos, launch events, TV galas, and robot competitions, seen with the same critical eye.
- A comprehensive annual AI conference and expo held every year in Shanghai.
- World Robot Conference世界机器人大会An annual robotics-focused conference held in Beijing, combining forums, an expo, and competitions.
- NVIDIA GTC英伟达 GTC 大会NVIDIA's annual AI and GPU technology conference, where Jensen Huang unveils new products.
- Consumer Electronics ShowCES 国际消费电子展The world's largest consumer-electronics trade show, held every January in Las Vegas.
- Tesla AI Day特斯拉 AI DayTesla's 2021 and 2022 technical showcase events, where the Optimus humanoid robot first appeared.
- Tesla We, Robot Event (2024)特斯拉 We, Robot 发布会Tesla's October 2024 event unveiling the Cybercab, with Optimus robots interacting live with attendees.
- Yangbot《秧BOT》A 2025 CCTV Spring Festival Gala segment in which Unitree H1 humanoid robots performed a traditional yangge dance.
- Wubot《武BOT》A 2026 CCTV Spring Festival Gala segment featuring a Unitree humanoid robot martial-arts performance.
- A 2025 nickname for six Hangzhou tech companies that rose to fame together, two of them robotics makers.
- World Humanoid Robot Games世界人形机器人运动会A multi-sport games held for the first time in Beijing in August 2025, exclusively for humanoid robots.
- A roughly 21-kilometer half marathon for humanoid robots held in Beijing's E-Town district, first run in April 2025.
- A CCTV-organized humanoid-robot combat competition where Unitree G1 units are remotely operated to fight.
- Ultimate Robot Knock-out LegendURKL 格斗联赛A humanoid-robot combat league launched by EngineAI, with competitors piloting robots into a fighting ring.
- RoboLeagueRoboLeague 机器人足球联赛A Chinese fully-autonomous humanoid robot soccer league where the robots see, position, and shoot on their own.
- RoboCupRoboCup 机器人世界杯An annual international robotics competition centered on robot soccer, held since 1997.
- RoboMaster / ROBOCON University Robotics CompetitionsRoboMaster / ROBOCON 大学生机器人竞赛China's two best-known university robotics competitions, where many robotics engineers get their start.
- DARPA Robotics ChallengeDARPA 机器人挑战赛A 2012–2015 US DARPA competition for disaster-response humanoid robots.
- Amazon Picking Challenge亚马逊拣选挑战赛A 2015–2017 Amazon-run competition for robots that pick items off warehouse shelves.
14.6Mass production and supply chains
Behind the show, robots first have to be built: what counts as mass production, why it’s hard, cost, and supply chains.
- Moving a product from a handful of hand-built prototypes to large-batch, consistent manufacturing on a fixed process.
- A media and industry label for “the year batch production and delivery began,” not an official benchmark.
- The number of robots a manufacturer actually ships to customers over a given period.
- Framework Order / Letter-of-Intent Order框架订单 / 意向订单An order laying out a partnership framework or purchase intent, not the same as actual delivery and revenue.
- Turning a technology that works in the lab into a reliable, mass-producible, maintainable product.
- Yield is the share of units that pass inspection; consistency is how little individual units differ from each other.
- Bill of Materials CostBOM 成本The total cost of every component and raw material needed to build one unit of a product.
- Replacing components or equipment that used to depend on imports with products from Chinese makers.
- A key technology or component that depends on imports and is hard to replace if supply is ever cut off.
- Tier-1 Supplier一级供应商（Tier 1）A component or module maker that supplies a complete-robot maker directly, one tier up from raw parts.
- A supplier sends samples for testing, and once approved, is formally named as the supplier for a project.
- Engineering / Design / Production Validation TestEVT / DVT / PVT（样机验证阶段）The three hardware-validation gates from prototype to mass production: engineering, design, and production.
- Start of ProductionSOP（量产启动）The point when a product formally begins mass manufacturing, a term borrowed from the auto industry.
- BotQFigure BotQ 工厂Figure AI's own humanoid-robot manufacturing plant, with a first line designed for 12,000 units a year.
- RoboFabAgility RoboFab 工厂Agility Robotics' dedicated factory in Oregon for building its Digit humanoid robot.
14.7Deployment and factory automation
Once built, robots still have to work in the field: the stages of deployment, how factories measure success, and why they want robots.
- A robot moves into an actual factory, warehouse, store, or similar setting and does real work that creates value.
- Proof of Concept概念验证A small-scale trial proving a solution can actually work in a customer's real scenario.
- Pilot / Small-Batch Delivery试点 / 小批量交付Delivering a few to a few dozen units to select customers first, to validate before scaling up.
- A trial placement of robots on a real factory line to test the job and collect data before wider rollout.
- Scaled Deployment规模化部署Robots going from a handful of pilot units to hundreds or thousands working long-term in real settings.
- Cycle Time / Units Per Hour节拍 / UPHCycle time is how many seconds one unit of work takes; UPH is how many units get done per hour.
- Number of Nines (Reliability)几个 9（可靠性）Counting the 9s in a percentage to describe reliability or success rate, e.g. 99.9% is “three nines.”
- Mean Time Between Failures平均无故障时间The average time a repairable machine runs normally between one failure and the next.
- Return on Investment / Payback Period投资回报 / 回本周期How long it takes a robot buyer to earn back the purchase cost through the money it saves.
- Labor Shortage用工荒 / 劳动力短缺Factories and similar employers can't find or keep enough workers, often cited as the core case for robots.
- Using robots and automation to replace human workers on production jobs.
- Dirty, Dull, and Dangerous (3D) Jobs3D 工作（脏、累、险）Jobs that are dirty, tedious, or dangerous — often seen as where robots will be deployed first.
- Robot Density机器人密度The number of industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers, a measure of a country's factory automation.
- A factory so highly automated it can run without people on-site, even with the lights off.
- People and robots working side by side on the same line or team, each handling different tasks.
- Brownfield Deployment棕地部署（存量工厂）Putting robots into an already-built factory designed around people, instead of a purpose-built new plant.
- A production line's ability to switch quickly between products, suited to small batches of many varieties.
- Automation equipment custom-designed for the specific needs of one production line.
- Custom-building a solution for each customer versus turning it into a standard product sold at scale.
14.8Business models and markets
Once it can work, it has to make money: who buys it, how it’s priced, and whether the business closes the loop.
- Selling a product to companies, factories, or institutions rather than individual consumers.
- Selling a product directly to individual consumers, such as home robots.
- A business model selling to government bodies, state-owned enterprises, and public institutions.
- Public Tender / Winning-Bid Orders招投标 / 中标订单（集采）State firms, governments, or universities publicly bid out robot purchases, and manufacturers compete for the contract.
- The market for selling robots to universities, research institutes, and schools for study and teaching.
- EDU EditionEDU 版（科研教育版）A maker's version of a robot aimed at universities and developers, with open low-level access and extra sensors.
- Consumer-Grade Robot消费级机器人A robot product sold directly to individuals and households, rather than to factories or businesses.
- 10,000-Yuan-Class Humanoid Robot万元级人形机器人A small humanoid robot priced from around RMB 10,000 to several tens of thousands, aimed mainly at individuals and education.
- Manufacturers repeatedly undercutting each other's prices to win share of the humanoid-robot market.
- The common Chinese business term for a company selling products or setting up operations abroad.
- Renting out humanoid or quadruped robots to perform at commercial events for a fee.
- Robots greeting, explaining, and leading the way at exhibition halls, malls, and lobbies.
- Robot Rental机器人租赁Renting a robot out by the day or event instead of selling it outright.
- Robot-as-a-Service机器人即服务Customers don't buy the robot; they pay by the month or by the amount of work it does.
- Paying monthly or yearly to use a robot or its software features, instead of buying it outright.
- Robot 4S Store机器人 4S 店A robot dealership modeled on car dealerships, combining sales, repair, parts, and feedback in one place.
- Embodied-AI Robot Insurance具身智能机器人保险Insurance designed for humanoid or embodied robots, covering damage to the robot and harm it causes others.
- A business model where a product keeps selling, revenue covers its costs, and the cycle sustains itself.
- Product-Market FitPMF（产品市场匹配）When a product satisfies a large enough market that customers actively choose to buy it.
- Killer App杀手级应用The one use case so valuable that customers buy an entire product just to get it.
14.9Hype cycles, funding, and IPOs
The business story is ultimately pitched to capital: first spotting hype and bubbles, then funding rounds, IPOs, and related stocks.
- ChatGPT Moment for RoboticsChatGPT 时刻Industry shorthand for the hoped-for turning point when general-purpose robot ability suddenly becomes usable and visible to the public.
- iPhone MomentiPhone 时刻The turning point when a technology gets its defining product and starts being adopted by the mainstream.
- ImageNet MomentImageNet 时刻The turning point when a large public dataset and benchmark lets one method break out and reshape a field.
- “DeepSeek Moment” for Embodied AIDeepSeek 时刻The hoped-for turning point when an open, cheap model drastically lowers the barrier to embodied AI, echoing DeepSeek-R1.
- Gartner Hype Cycle技术成熟度曲线（Gartner 炒作周期）A five-stage curve describing how a new technology moves from hype to disillusionment to real adoption.
- Embodied AI Bubble具身智能泡沫The worry that funding and valuations in embodied AI are running ahead of the technology's actual maturity and commercial payoff.
- A phrase describing the crowd of well over a hundred Chinese companies all building humanoid robots at once.
- Homogenization / Redundant Construction同质化 / 重复建设Many companies and regions building nearly identical products and projects, wasting resources.
- Funding Rounds & Valuation融资轮次与估值（天使轮 / A 轮 / Pre-IPO / 独角兽）The staged way startups raise money, and the price investors agree the company is worth at each stage.
- Total Addressable Market市场空间（TAM）The full market size a product could theoretically capture if it won every target customer.
- Patient Capital耐心资本（国资长线投资）Investment willing to be held long-term without demanding a quick return, often state-backed in China.
- STAR Market科创板A Shanghai Stock Exchange board for hard-tech companies, piloting China's IPO registration system.
- HKEX Chapter 18C港股 18C 章A Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing channel for hard-tech companies with little or no revenue yet.
- Pre-IPO Tutoring上市辅导The mandatory process where a securities firm prepares an A-share company's governance before it files to list.
- Backdoor Listing借壳上市An unlisted company buys control of a listed “shell” company and injects its own business to go public.
- Special Purpose Acquisition CompanySPAC 上市（特殊目的收购公司）A shell company lists first to raise money, then merges with a target to take it public indirectly.
- A media label for the first humanoid-robot company to list on a given stock market.
- Humanoid Robot Concept Stocks人形机器人概念股Stocks the market groups together as “related to humanoid robots,” rising and falling on industry news.
- Tesla (Optimus) Supply ChainT 链（特斯拉链）Component makers believed to supply, or possibly supply, Tesla's Optimus robot, mostly an A-share market label.
- How much money one category of component adds up to inside a single robot, used to size a market.
14.10Policy and standards
Beyond capital, government plays a role too: national direction, policy documents, open challenges, and finally, standards and new job titles.
- Embodied AI First Named in the Government Work Report政府工作报告首次写入具身智能China's 2025 annual Government Work Report named embodied AI for the first time as an industry to cultivate.
- Chinese policy term for industries still at an early technical stage that could become tomorrow's pillar sectors.
- Chinese policy term for advanced productive capacity led by scientific and technological innovation.
- China's national economic and social development plan for 2026–2030, in which embodied AI is named a future industry.
- AI+ Initiative人工智能+ 行动China's national push to deeply integrate AI into every industry, with smart robots as one focus area.
- “Robot+” Application Action Implementation Plan《“机器人+”应用行动实施方案》A 2023 policy from 17 Chinese ministries promoting the use of robots across many industries beyond manufacturing.
- A 2023 MIIT policy document, China's first industrial policy specifically for humanoid robots.
- A Chinese government method where officials post key tech problems publicly and let any capable team compete to solve them.
- Application Scenario List / Scenario Opening应用场景清单 / 场景开放Governments or state firms publish real business scenarios where new technology can be trialed, and invite companies in.
- Pilot-Scale Testing Base中试基地（中试验证平台）A public platform that validates lab results under near-mass-production conditions before full-scale manufacturing.
- MIIT Humanoid Robot and Embodied AI Standardization Technical Committee人形机器人与具身智能标准化技术委员会A MIIT-established standards committee responsible for humanoid-robot and embodied-AI industry standards.
- Embodied AI Robot Application Technician具身智能机器人应用技术员（新职业）A national occupation category China created in September 2026, covering data collection, model tuning, and field deployment for robots.