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ABB Robotics

Robotics division of the Swiss ABB group: articulated robots, cobots, SCARA, paint robots and AMRs for industry.

AgileX Robotics

Chinese maker of modular mobile robot platforms (UGVs) for research, industry and agriculture, ROS/ROS2 compatible.

AGV

Automated Guided Vehicle — véhicule à guidage automatique

AMR

Autonomous Mobile Robot — robot mobile autonome

Anti-dumping duty

An anti-dumping duty is a charge a WTO member may impose on imports from a particular source, above its bound tariff rates, when a product enters its market below normal value and injures a domestic industry. It may only follow an investigation that establishes dumping, material injury and a causal link between the two. Imposition is optional, a duty lower than the dumping margin is encouraged where that removes the injury, and duties normally lapse five years after first being applied unless a review finds dumping and injury would return.

ATA carnet

An ATA carnet is the single document that covers goods for temporary admission into a Customs territory with relief from duties and taxes, secured by an international guarantee system. The term combines the French "Admission Temporaire" and English "Temporary Admission". It serves as the goods declaration at export, transit and import under the WCO ATA system and related conventions.

AUBO

Chinese maker of collaborative robots (R&D in Beijing, plants in Shandong and Jiangsu); AUBO Robotics USA operates as its North American distributor.

Battery management system

Bill of lading

A bill of lading is the contract between the owner of the goods and the carrier moving them. Vessel shipments use two forms: a straight bill, which is not negotiable, and an order or shipper's-order bill, which is negotiable and can be bought, sold or traded while the cargo is still in transit. The original order ocean bill is the document that evidences title, so the goods are released only once the buyer has endorsed it and surrendered it to the carrier. Air movements travel under an air waybill, which is non-negotiable and does not have to be presented to claim the consignment.

BIS certification

Bureau of Indian Standards — marque ISI / enregistrement CRS

Bonded warehouse

A Customs bonded warehouse is a building or other secured area in which imported dutiable merchandise may be stored, manipulated, or undergo manufacturing operations without payment of duty for up to five years from the date of importation. Authority rests in Title 19 U.S.C. section 1555 and the regulations at 19 CFR 19.

BSMI inspection mark

Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection — marques d'inspection taïwanaises

Cargo insurance

CCC marking

China Compulsory Certification — certification obligatoire chinoise

CE marking

Conformité européenne — marquage réglementaire d'accès au marché UE/EEE

Charging dock

Cognex

US maker (Natick, MA) of machine vision systems and barcode readers for inspection and robot guidance.

Collaborative robot

A collaborative robot is an industrial robot designed to perform tasks in collaboration with human workers rather than behind the separation of a traditional production cell. Two groups are distinguished: robots built for collaborative use that comply with the ISO 10218-1 safety standard, and robots that follow other safety standards instead — which does not in itself make them unsafe. Machines designed to share a workspace with people, often called cobots, rely on features such as lightweight materials, rounded contours, padding and sensors that keep force and speed below defined thresholds so that direct contact with a worker causes no harm. Deployment is growing quickly: in 2022 almost 55,000 collaborative robots were newly installed, a rise of 31 per cent and 9.9 per cent of all industrial robots installed that year.

Commodity code

A commodity code is an internationally recognised reference number that describes a specific product when goods are imported or exported, and it must be entered on the import declaration. The code works out the rate of Customs Duty and import VAT, other taxes and any preferential rates that may apply, and it also drives checks on whether a licence is needed and whether the goods fall under anti-dumping duties, safeguard measures or tariff quotas. Only the first six digits are shared worldwide; the remaining digits and product-specific classification decisions vary by country, so a code supplied by an overseas vendor must be checked before it is reused. This is the United Kingdom regime, where codes are looked up in the Trade Tariff tool.

Customs broker

A customs broker, in the United States regime described by the cited source, is an individual, partnership, association or corporation licensed, regulated and empowered by Customs and Border Protection to help importers and exporters meet federal import and export requirements. Brokers file the required information and payments with the agency on their clients' behalf for a fee, and must command entry procedures, admissibility, classification, valuation and the applicable duty rates, taxes and fees. A company needs its own licence and at least one individually licensed officer, partner or associate to qualify it. About 14,454 licensed brokers were active at the time of the source.

Customs declaration

A customs declaration is the official document setting out the details of goods entering or leaving EU customs territory, and the legal act by which an operator states the intention to place those goods under an EU customs procedure. It is normally lodged at the customs office of the country where the goods are presented on entry, and the parties involved are generally expected to be established in the EU. The Union Customs Code requires declarations to be made online, allows an oral declaration in limited cases such as non-commercial goods, and recognises certain other acts as a declaration. Simplifications exist, including incomplete declarations, entry in the declarant's records and a single declaration covering several tariff subheadings, dutiable at the highest rate among them.

Customs valuation

Customs valuation is the customs procedure used to determine the customs value of imported goods. When the duty rate is ad valorem, that value determines the duty payable. Under the WTO Agreement the primary method is the transaction value — the price actually paid or payable for the goods, adjusted as required by the Agreement.

Cycloidal reducer

Dangerous goods Class 9

Class 9, in the United States hazardous materials regulations, is the residual category: a miscellaneous hazardous material that presents a hazard during transportation but does not meet the definition of any other hazard class. The class expressly takes in materials with an anesthetic, noxious or similar property that could cause enough annoyance or discomfort to stop a flight crew member performing assigned duties, and materials meeting the regulatory definitions of an elevated temperature material, a hazardous substance, a hazardous waste or a marine pollutant. The cited definition does not name lithium batteries or any other specific article, and it sets no labelling or packaging requirements, which sit elsewhere in the same subchapter.

DDP

Delivered Duty Paid — rendu droits acquittés

Delta robot

Demurrage and detention

Digital twin

Doosan Robotics

South Korean maker of collaborative robots, notably for palletising and food-and-beverage applications.

EAC marking

Eurasian Conformity — marque unique de l'Union économique eurasiatique

EMC Directive

Directive 2014/30/UE — compatibilité électromagnétique

Encoder

End effector

The end effector is the tool at the wrist of the robot arm, also called end-of-arm tooling, and it is a distinct part of the industrial robot system rather than of the robot itself. The same arm is commonly fitted with different end effectors according to the application, and the catalogue spans grippers, pickers, welding torches, cutting and trimming tools, material removal and drilling tools, adhesive dispensers, cameras, inspection equipment and collision or force-torque sensors. Hundreds are on the market. They are also a hazard in their own right: released parts, gripper failure and power-tool breakdown are named as mechanical-failure hazards for workers.

EORI number

Economic Operators Registration and Identification

Escrow payment

Escrow, in international trade, is a service in which a trusted third party holds the buyer's funds until agreed conditions are met. The importer pays the escrow service, the exporter is instructed to ship once that payment is verified, the importer has a set period after delivery to inspect and accept the goods, and only then are the funds released to the exporter. The fee may be borne by one side or split evenly, and the service is offered by international banks and firms specialising in escrow and custody. The cited source classes escrow as a cash-in-advance method suited to small transactions where the importer wants assurance that goods will actually be sent, and does not compare it with a letter of credit.

EU declaration of conformity

Export packing for machinery

FANUC

Japanese maker of industrial robots, CNC systems and factory automation; over one million robots installed worldwide.

FAT / SAT acceptance tests

FCC Part 15

Part 15 of the United States communications rules sets the conditions under which a radio-frequency device may be operated without an individual licence, together with the technical limits, administrative requirements and marketing conditions that attach to such devices. It sorts equipment into intentional radiators, which deliberately emit radio-frequency energy, unintentional radiators, which generate it internally or pass it by conduction to attached equipment, and incidental radiators such as DC motors or mechanical switches, which emit although never designed to. Operating outside these rules requires a licence, and operating or marketing a non-compliant device — including one lacking the prior equipment authorisation where that applies — is prohibited by statute.

FCL vs LCL container shipping

Fieldbus (EtherCAT / PROFINET)

Fleet management software

Force-torque sensor

Freight forwarder

The cited source defines the regulated United States ocean role rather than freight forwarding at large: an Ocean Freight Forwarder is an individual or company located in the U.S. that arranges cargo movement to an international destination, dispatches shipments from the United States via common carriers, books or otherwise arranges space on behalf of shippers, and prepares and processes the related documentation. With the non-vessel-operating common carrier, it is one of the two Ocean Transportation Intermediaries regulated by the Federal Maritime Commission under the Shipping Act of 1984. Before serving the U.S. trades a forwarder must hold a Commission licence and file proof of financial responsibility for transportation-related claims.

Geek+

Chinese maker (Beijing, listed in Hong Kong) of AMRs for warehouse and logistics automation.

Harmonic drive

The cited page is the manufacturer's own technical documentation, and it states that Harmonic Drive is a registered trademark of that company; the mechanism it describes is strain wave gearing. The gear works on the elastic deformation of metal and has only three parts — a wave generator, a flexspline and a circular spline — the circular spline carrying two more teeth than the flexspline, so each turn of the wave generator advances the flexspline by two teeth. Because teeth stay fully engaged along the ellipse's major axis, the gearing is described as having zero backlash, with high torque, high reduction ratios, positional accuracy and repeatability in a compact, light package whose size and weight do not change with the ratio.

Hesai

Chinese maker (Shanghai) of lidar sensors for autonomous driving, robotics and ADAS applications.

Hikrobot

Chinese maker of mobile robots and machine vision systems, a Hikvision group subsidiary.

Import licence

Import VAT

Import VAT is the value-added tax due when goods enter Great Britain from outside the UK, or Northern Ireland from outside the EU, and it is normally charged at the rate the same goods would attract if supplied domestically. Its taxable amount is the customs value plus incidental costs such as commission, packing, transport and insurance up to the first destination in the country, plus any customs, levy or excise charges, excluding the VAT itself. A VAT-registered business can use postponed accounting to declare and reclaim the tax on the same return, or pay at importation and reclaim it as input tax against the import VAT statement; a trader who is not VAT-registered pays it without being able to recover it.

Importing used machinery

Incoterms

International Commercial Terms — termes commerciaux internationaux de l'ICC

Industrial robot

An industrial robot is a machine used in place of a worker for dangerous or repetitive tasks demanding accuracy, and it is only one part of an industrial robot system, which also comprises the end effector on the manipulator, the control system of computers, processors and programs, power sources, sensors and the communication interfaces that sequence or monitor the work. Common structures are articulated, SCARA, cartesian and parallel arms, distinguished by joints and axes and therefore by working space and payload. Typical duties include material handling, assembly, arc and resistance welding, machine-tool loading, painting, inspection and packaging. The cited source describes these components and structures but draws no formal boundary between an industrial robot and other automated machinery.

INMETRO certification

Instituto Nacional de Metrologia, Qualidade e Tecnologia — certification obligatoire brésilienne

Inward processing relief

Inward processing is the procedure under which non-EU goods are imported into the EU customs territory to undergo one or more processing operations such as manufacturing or repair, without being subject to import duty, other import taxes, or commercial policy measures. After processing the goods may be re-exported, placed under another customs procedure, or released for free circulation upon payment of the applicable charges.

ISO 10218

ISO 10218 — exigences de sécurité des robots industriels

ISO 13849 — safety of control systems

ISO 9001 supplier certification

ISO/TS 15066

ISO/TS 15066 — robots et dispositifs robotiques collaboratifs

JAKA

Chinese maker (Shanghai) of collaborative robots for packaging, palletising, machine tending and welding.

Kassow Robots

Danish maker (Copenhagen) of seven-axis cobots for industrial automation.

KC certification

Korea Certification — certification de sécurité obligatoire coréenne

Keyence

Japanese fabless maker of sensors, vision systems, measuring instruments and code readers for industrial automation.

KUKA

German maker of industrial robots and factory automation systems (KUKA AG group).

Last-mile machinery haulage

Letter of credit

A letter of credit is a contractual commitment by the buyer's bank to pay once the goods have been shipped and the required documents are presented to the seller's bank as proof. It is built to protect both sides of a cross-border sale: the exporter obtains a guarantee of payment while the importer secures reasonable payment terms. It ranks among the most secure payment instruments available, but it is labour-intensive and relatively expensive in bank fees, so it is recommended for higher-risk situations — a new or less-established trading relationship, credit information that is unacceptable or unavailable, or a request for extended payment terms. The documentary requirements are detailed and prone to errors and discrepancies, and mistakes bring payment delays and extra fees, so the paperwork is best prepared by trained professionals.

LiDAR

Lidar, or light detection and ranging, is a remote sensing method that fires pulsed laser light to measure varying distances to a surface; combined with position and orientation data it yields precise three-dimensional information about shape and surface characteristics. An instrument is principally a laser, a scanner and a specialised GPS receiver, and the returns form a dense point cloud whose points each carry three-dimensional coordinates, from which elevation, canopy, building and contour models are derived. The cited source describes airborne survey use, distinguishing topographic lidar with a near-infrared laser from bathymetric lidar using water-penetrating green light; it does not address robot navigation, sensor range specifications or laser safety classification.

Linear actuator

Locus Robotics

US maker (Wilmington, MA) of autonomous mobile robots for warehouse order picking, sold on a RaaS model.

Low Voltage Directive

Machine vision

Machinery Regulation

Règlement (UE) 2023/1230 relatif aux machines

Machinery risk assessment

Magnetic gripper

Marine cargo insurance

Marketplace trade assurance

MiR — Mobile Industrial Robots

Danish maker (Odense) of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for internal transport and intralogistics.

MOQ

Minimum Order Quantity — quantité minimale de commande

Notified body

NRTL listing

Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory — certification exigée par l'OSHA

OEM vs ODM

Original Equipment Manufacturer / Original Design Manufacturer

Offline programming

Omron Robotics

Robotics arm of the Japanese Omron group: autonomous mobile robots and mobile manipulators for industry.

OnRobot

Danish maker (Odense) of end-of-arm tooling: grippers, force-torque sensors and tool changers for collaborative robots.

Ouster

US maker (San Francisco) of high-resolution digital 3D lidar sensors for autonomous vehicles, robotics and industry.

Palletizing robot

Parallel gripper

Payload and reach

Piab

Swedish maker of vacuum gripping and lifting solutions (suction cups, vacuum generators) for automation.

Pilz

German maker (Ostfildern) of safety automation: safety sensors, relays and programmable safety controllers.

Planetary gearbox

Preferential origin claim

Proforma invoice

PSE marking

Electrical Appliances and Materials Safety Act (DENAN) — marquage PSE japonais

Radio Equipment Directive

RCM marking

Regulatory Compliance Mark — marque de conformité du marché australien

Recommended spare parts list

Repeatability

RFQ

Request for Quotation — demande de cotation

Robot controller

Robotiq

Canadian maker (Québec) of adaptive grippers and force-torque sensors for cobots.

RoHS

Restriction of Hazardous Substances — directive 2011/65/UE

ROS — Robot Operating System

Rules of origin

Rules of origin are the criteria that fix the national source of a product, and they matter because duties and restrictions frequently depend on where goods come from. Practice varies widely: substantial transformation is universally accepted as the test, but governments implement it through change of tariff classification, an ad valorem percentage or a specified manufacturing or processing operation. Origin is used to apply anti-dumping and safeguard measures, to decide whether most-favoured-nation or preferential treatment applies, and for marking, statistics and government procurement. The WTO Agreement on Rules of Origin binds only non-preferential rules; preferential rules are covered by an annex extending principles such as transparency and non-retroactivity, and members must notify their preferential rules to the Secretariat.

Safety laser scanner

Safety PLC

SASO certificate of conformity

Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization — certificats de conformité (Saber/G-mark)

SCARA robot

SCC-accredited certification mark

Standards Council of Canada — marques des organismes de certification accrédités

SCHUNK

German maker of grippers (pneumatic, electric, magnetic), clamping technology and end-of-arm tooling for robot arms.

Service level agreement

Servo motor

SICK

German maker (Waldkirch) of industrial sensors, machine safety, auto-identification and vision for factory and logistics automation.

Singapore SAFETY Mark

Consumer Protection (Safety Requirements) Regulations — marque SAFETY singapourienne

Site delivery and crane offload

Six-axis articulated arm

Standard Robots

Chinese maker (Shenzhen) of AMRs — lifting, transport, forklift and tractor units — for flexible intralogistics.

Stepper motor

Supplier audit

T1 transit document

Teach pendant

A teach pendant is the portable control device used to program a robot in manual mode, and it is how most robot systems are set up for an application: a trained programmer walks the robot through its tasks by hand, holding control of the robot and the equipment around it. Because the programmer is often inside the robot's restricted space while doing so, robot speeds during teaching are held below ten inches, or 250 millimetres, per second. Mis-activation of the pendant or the control panel is named as a frequent worker error, and mistakes here can injure, particularly on large or complex systems where the wrong function is easy to trigger.

Techman Robot

Taiwanese maker of collaborative robots with built-in vision, a Quanta group subsidiary.

Technical file

Third-party factory inspection

Tool changer

Tugger AGV

UKCA marking

UK Conformity Assessed — marquage réglementaire d'accès au marché britannique

UKCA transition

For the Great Britain market, UKCA and CE are two routes to the same statement — that the manufacturer believes the product meets the applicable requirements — across regimes spanning more than twenty product types. Because many UK requirements derive from EU rules, the United Kingdom continues to recognise CE marking alongside or instead of UKCA under the Product Safety and Metrology (Amendment) Regulations 2024, and the same regulations allow a UKCA mark to be applied on the strength of recognised EU requirements and assessment processes, known as Fast-Track UKCA. UK Approved Bodies certify for UKCA and EU Notified Bodies for the EU requirements usable in Great Britain. The cited guidance sets no end date for that recognition; the deadline it does give, 11pm on 31 December 2027, concerns where the UKCA marking may be placed rather than whether CE is accepted.

UN 38.3

Norme d'essais ONU pour le transport des batteries lithium

Unit-load AGV

Universal Robots

Danish maker of six-axis collaborative robot arms (cobots) aimed at SME automation; a Teradyne subsidiary.

Vacuum gripper

Warranty terms

Yaskawa Motoman

Industrial robot brand (welding, handling, palletising) of Yaskawa Electric Corporation, Japanese maker of servo motors and drives.

Zimmer Group

German family-owned maker (Rheinau) of mechanical and vacuum grippers, tool changers and handling components; unrelated to the medical firm Zimmer Biomet.