Standards
Status, never a rating
We don't judge whether a robot is good, safe or worth buying. We report how far it has got, from dated sources anyone can check, by rules written down here.
01The stages
Five steps, one ladder
Every robot, from a home vacuum to a surgical system, sits on the same ladder. Its stage is computed from its dated milestones each time the site updates. The highest rule a robot meets places it.
Demo only
Demo only. Shown in videos, staged events or a factory, with no units working for customers.
Pre-orders
Pre-orders. Orders, reservations or deposits taken, with nothing delivered yet.
Pilot
Pilot. Working with a named customer in a real setting, as a trial.
Paying customers
Paying customers. Delivered to customers who pay for it, beyond a trial, or a paid service the public can use.
Regulator-cleared or mass market
Cleared by a regulator. A regulator has cleared it where approval applies: FDA clearance or approval for a medical robot, a permit to run with no one aboard for a self-driving vehicle, or an FAA approval for routine drone flights.
Mass market. Widely sold: sales in the hundreds of thousands, or a product category you can buy in ordinary shops.
Cleared is not approved. Most medical robots reach the US market through FDA clearance (510(k) or De Novo), which is a different, lighter route than approval. We always say which.
Caps. Now and then a robot's milestones would place it higher than the evidence really supports, for example robots that only work in their owner's own factories. We then hold it lower and name the reason on its page.
Not a rating. A stage says how far a robot has got, not how well it works. A stage 5 robot can still have problems, and they are listed on its page.
02The two flags
Who says so, and who's helping
Two flags sit beside every stage, because the same stage can rest on very different evidence.
Evidence
Independently reported: a regulator, a filing, a named customer or a journalist reporting on their own backs the milestones behind the stage.
Company-reported only: the stage rests on the maker's own word. We still show it, and say so.
Human help
Controlled by a surgeon: A surgeon in the operating room controls it; it doesn't operate on its own.
Remote operators: People working remotely can steer it or take over.
Safety driver aboard: A person sits at the wheel, ready to take over.
Safety monitor aboard: A staff member rides along, ready to stop it.
None reported: Our sources report it working without human help.
Not disclosed: The maker hasn't said whether people help it remotely.
03Sources
Public records first
We read free public records first, then the makers' own newsrooms, then trusted outlets. Regulators and filings can move a stage; company news is labelled until something independent backs it.
- FDA records
- Clearances, approvals, recalls and problem reports for surgical, medical and assistive robots.
- NHTSA crash reports
- Crashes involving self-driving and driver-assist cars, reported monthly under the agency's standing order.
- California DMV and CPUC
- Permits for driverless testing and paid rides, collision reports and trip data.
- Other state regulators
- Where driverless service is allowed in states such as Nevada, Texas and Arizona.
- FAA and the Federal Register
- Approvals and rules for drone deliveries, including routine flights beyond the pilot's sight.
- CPSC recalls
- Recalls of robot vacuums, mowers, toys and other home robots.
- SEC filings
- Customer, unit and revenue figures that listed companies state under securities law.
- arXiv
- New robotics research papers that name a robot we track. Research never moves a stage.
- Makers' newsrooms
- Announcements, always labelled company-reported until something independent backs them.
- Trusted outlets
- Reuters, AP, IEEE Spectrum, MIT Technology Review, WIRED, The Verge, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, MedTech Dive, STAT, FreightWaves, DroneXL and others, for news and verbatim expert quotes.
04Editorial rules
What we never do
- Never invent. No number, date, price, quote or person appears unless a source we can link to says it. An empty field beats a guess: “Not stated in our sources.”
- Every passage checked. Each fact is backed by a passage copied word for word from its source, and our checker fetches the page to confirm the words are there. Passages that fail are dropped.
- No opinions, no rankings, no “best buy”. Lists are ordered by stage and name, never by preference.
- No in-house experts. Expert views are quoted word for word, named, with their role and source. The founder is not an engineer and the site says so.
- Fixed wordings. Claim-check verdicts and “what this means for you” lines come from a fixed set chosen by the kind of evidence, so they can't overstate.
05Corrections
When we get it wrong
Tell us through the contact page, with a link to a source. We check it against the source, fix the record and date the change on the robot's page. A correction that moves a stage is noted beside the stage.
06Advertising
Money never touches the record
- Sponsors never change stages, counts, quotes, the order of lists or what we cover.
- Sponsored items and affiliate links are labelled where they appear. We may decline any sponsor.
- Anything connected to the owner carries a disclosure.