Humanoids A to Z: A Modern Glossary for Humanoid Robotics

In 2025, humanoid robots are no longer a long-term bet, they’re entering production. Major industrial players are partnering with robotics companies, moving humanoids out of labs and into real workflows faster than expected. According to a recent Morgan Stanley article, by 2050 the number of humanoid robots could approach 1 billion, with the market projected to surpass $5 trillion.

But progress in this space comes with complexity. Humanoids combine various technologies and mechanisms across its hardware and software, including high-DOF mechanics, real-time whole-body control, reinforcement learning, or foundation-scale perception models among others. Even familiar terms like “fall recovery” or “training data” take on new meaning in humanoid robotics context.

That’s why we created this glossary: a guide to the terminology shaping the field built to help you move fluently through the language of next-gen robotics.