Evolving Encyclopedia For Classifying Robots

The robotic encyclopedia organizes robots by design, talents, and touch-based expertise, serving to specialists examine programs and enhance robotics.

Through the years, roboticists have developed many programs with totally different constructions and capabilities. Because the variety of robots grows, having a straightforward solution to find out about their traits, variations, and efficiency could possibly be extremely helpful. Researchers on the Technical College of Munich (TUM) have created the “Tree of Robots,” an encyclopedia designed to simplify studying about and evaluating robotic programs. 

The purpose of making clever robots that may perceive their surroundings like people and carry out duties independently has existed for a very long time. The event of tactile robots—programs that understand their environment by means of contact—started about 20 years in the past with the introduction of light-weight designs that includes torque sensors in each joint. Advances in expertise, management programs, and response mechanisms have since led to robots that may successfully execute duties and work together with their surroundings by means of contact.

Most present requirements for classifying robots don’t take into account their means to adapt to environment and work together with objects by means of contact. This functionality is crucial for each security and efficiency throughout varied real-world functions.

To deal with the constraints of present robotic classification strategies, the analysis staff examined varied programs, specializing in options that have an effect on security, similar to detecting contact with objects. Additionally they analyzed robotics duties in depth, growing metrics to evaluate capabilities past security, together with efficiency in tactile duties and human interplay.

The Tree of Robots encyclopedia is designed to be repeatedly up to date, serving as a Wikipedia-like platform for robotic data. It covers particulars from physique constructions to the motors and sensors used, highlighting key capabilities similar to tactility health (sensitivity and reliability in bodily interactions) and movement health (precision in motion).

Not like many earlier robotic classification strategies, the Tree of Robots encyclopedia clearly defines the specialised capabilities of various programs. It additionally categorizes robots into three principal teams primarily based on tactility health, measuring their suitability for particular duties.

The staff’s encyclopedia might help future analysis by serving to laptop scientists and roboticists determine one of the best programs for testing their algorithms. Additionally they plan to develop the Tree of Robots with extra robotic programs and extra metrics.

Reference: Robin Jeanne Kirschner et al, Categorizing robots by efficiency health into the tree of robots, Nature Machine Intelligence (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-025-00995-y.