How this index is built

A robot is published only when all four of these are true:

• It is a humanoid robot — a bipedal or human-form machine, not an arm, AMR or toy.
• It is a commercial product or a commercial programme, not a pure research platform.
• It has a named manufacturer with a live, official website.
• We hold an accurate photograph of the actual machine.

If we cannot find a real photograph, the listing shows a plain “no image yet” placeholder. We never generate, substitute or borrow a picture of a different robot.

Tiers are derived automatically from dated records that link to a source. A manufacturer saying something never promotes a robot on its own.

T1 Deployed

A customer, or arms-length press, confirms the robot doing real work in production.

T2 Piloting

A named organisation is running a pilot, trial or paid evaluation, reported by a source we can link to.

T3 Demoing

Independent coverage exists — demos, launches, benchmarks — but no customer has been named.

T4 Announced

Nothing beyond the manufacturer's own announcement has been recorded yet.

What promotes a robot is dated, linked evidence from someone other than the maker: a named customer saying they run it, a deployment or pilot reported by an independent outlet, or a procurement record. We read manufacturer specifications and publish them as the maker’s own figures, but a manufacturer’s claim that its robot is deployed does not by itself move it to a higher tier.

Every record that sets a tier is visible in that robot’s ledger on the Reality Index and in “Record & sources” on its page. A robot can move down as well as up: if the only evidence is years old, its tier reflects that.

Arms-length reporting, the customer’s own announcement, regulatory or procurement records, and manufacturer material when the fact is about the manufacturer (price, specs, ship window). Every record stores the link and the publication name.

What does not count: aggregator posts with no original reporting, unattributed social posts, and press releases recycled without a named customer.

A price is only shown when it comes from the manufacturer’s own store, order page or spec sheet, or from reporting that quotes the manufacturer. Prices are list prices in USD before shipping, support and integration. Where a maker quotes a lease or a “from” figure, we say so in the note rather than inventing a number.

A daily job reads humanoid coverage across trade press, wires and manufacturer newsrooms, reads each candidate article once, extracts the robot name, maker, price and official website, then confirms the machine against the manufacturer’s own site. Every decision — added or rejected, with the reason — is logged.

We never copy another directory wholesale. Anyone can submit a robot and a manufacturer can claim its listing.

• No paid placement, paid tiers or sponsored ranking. Money cannot move a robot up.
• No AI-generated or stand-in photographs.
• No specification we cannot attribute to a source.
• No silent edits — corrections are added to the record with a date.

Spotted something wrong? Tell us and we will fix it with the correction dated in the ledger.