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Robot Autonomy, Classified
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Classification frameworkv2.14 ratings

Human Readiness: where a robot stands between shipping product and press release.

A robot can be technically impressive and still wrong for a household today. Human Readiness names where each robot sits on the path from credible consumer option to unshipped promise, so a buying decision has a category before it has a price.

Revisionv2.1
August 16, 2026
322 robots assessed
The four ratingsComputed from the record, not assigned: release date, assessment completeness, and succession derive three of the four; Known Issues is the one documented editorial call. The bar at each row shows how many of the 322 rated robots carry that rating today. A rating is a claim about buying a robot now; records outside that situation show the reason there is no rating instead, listed below the index.Contents
When there is no rating

A rating is a claim about a purchase you could make today, so a robot outside that situation shows the reason instead of a borrowed word: Not rated yet (our assessment is not published; the Evidence and Score panels say what is missing), Pre-release (shipping to nobody), Not consumer-ready (sold to businesses and labs only), and Discontinued (no longer sold new). One note can ride any outcome: import only, when the purchase channel is not ordinary US retail.

Ratings
4 ratings
Computed daily; one human call
Revision
v2.1
Computed ratings, Aug 16, 2026
Applied to
322 robots
Reassessed quarterly
Anchored in
Household outcomes
What happens after the box is opened
What readiness measures

Not a grade. A category.

Human Readiness describes the relationship between a robot and a household that is considering it today. Two robots can be equally capable and land in different states, because one is shipping with a reliable after-sales path and the other is shipping with a two-year wait. A robot’s state is a read of the moment, not a judgement of the engineering behind it.

Each state is defined by what an owner actually encounters in the first ninety days: delivery timeline, feature availability at launch versus later, the gap between demo reels and owner footage, and whether the near-term competitive field is about to reshape the choice. A robot’s state can move in either direction as any of those shift.

The four ratings

One robot, four possible reads.

Each state is a distinct relationship between the product and the household. Read them as categories, not positions on a scale.

Ready Now
Applied to304 robots

The robot is already doing the job in real households.

On sale past the first-90-day ownership window, assessed on independent evidence, with no documented issues and no announced successor. The residual rating: it is reached by falling through every other test, never asserted.

When it applies
Computed: 90 or more days on sale, a published assessment, no documented issues standing, no announced successor.
Signals we look for
Sustained uptime in owner reports, responsive support threads, firmware cadence, available parts.
Moves out when
A documented problem, an announced successor, or a withdrawn listing moves it out on the next daily recomputation.

New to Market

Applied to2 robots

On sale today; the record is not in yet.

Purchasable now, but inside the first-90-day ownership window — the unit of evidence this publication already measures by. Launch reviews exist; the faults, firmware cadence, and support experience have not had time to happen. Not a doubt about the machine, a statement about time.

When it applies
Computed: a release date inside the last 90 days.
Signals we look for
Launch coverage, early availability, first-week owner threads.
Moves out when
Crossing 90 days with a published assessment and no documented issues moves it to Ready Now automatically.

Wait

Applied to0 robots

It works. Its replacement is announced.

The robot is functional on its own terms, and its manufacturer has announced the machine that replaces it. Between announcement and shipping, the buying decision is best re-read on arrival.

When it applies
Computed: a successor record exists and has not shipped. The link is written when an announcement is ingested, so the rating appears in announcement season and drains as launches happen.
Signals we look for
Manufacturer announcements, roadmaps, FCC filings of replacement hardware.
Moves out when
The successor shipping settles the decision automatically; slipping six months past its announcement expires the hold, also automatically.

Known Issues

Applied to16 robots

The record has documented problems, and we name them.

Whether the problem is a core-task failure, a shut-down service platform, marketing the record contradicts, or independent sources at war with each other, the rating is one word and the robot page carries the documented case. The severity lives in the case, not in a taxonomy of negative labels.

When it applies
An editorial call — the one human input in the framework — made only with named, documented evidence published on the robot page. It stands anywhere, including on discontinued robots, because a documented problem outlives the shelf.
Signals we look for
Recall filings, shut-down platforms, contradictory independent tests, warranty escalation threads, demo-only capabilities.
Moves out when
The record resolving retires the call: a fix shipping, claims aligning with behavior, or independent reports converging.
How a state is assigned

Four signal families, then a state.

A readiness state is the output of four independent reads. No single source is load-bearing on its own.

I.

First-90-day owner reports

Threads, reviews, and forum write-ups dated within three months of purchase. Weighted over launch-week reviews, which rarely match ownership.

II.

Demo-reel reconciliation

We compare manufacturer demos and keynote footage against owner-captured video. A capability that appears only in scripted environments is flagged.

III.

Availability & support signal

Lead times, regional availability, documented warranty paths, firmware release cadence. A credible product with no serviceable ownership path is not Ready Now.

IV.

Near-term replacement risk

FCC filings, manufacturer roadmaps, and credible competitor announcements within a six-month window. Drives Wait assignments.

Common questions

What readers actually ask about readiness.

I.Why one negative rating instead of several?
Earlier revisions distinguished a product that fails its job from one mis-sold by its marketing from one whose reviews disagree. The reader's action is identical in every case: read the documented case before buying. So the rating is one word, Known Issues, and the case on the robot page carries what kind of problem it is and how serious.
II.Does a readiness state change the autonomy classification?
Not directly. The two scales measure different things. Autonomy is about what the robot does on its own. Readiness is about the robot's relationship to a household today. A robot can be Level III and Ready Now, or Level III and Known Issues, because its autonomy has not changed while its field record has.
III.How often is readiness re-assessed?
Daily, by computation. Since August 2026 the state is derived from the record itself: lifecycle stage, release date, assessment completeness, succession, and the documented editorial calls. The engine re-derives every robot each day, so a successor shipping or a robot crossing its first 90 days moves its rating without anyone touching it. The Known Issues call is the only human input, and it requires named, documented evidence.
IV.Can "Wait" become permanent?
Wait has a shelf life. If the replacement that triggered the state slips past six months or fails to ship, we re-read the original robot. It either returns to Ready Now, if still current, or to Known Issues if documented problems have accumulated in the meantime.
V.Why do so few robots carry Known Issues?
Mostly because of what enters the database. We classify shipping and announced products with enough public evidence to read, and products that survive to retail in this category have usually cleared the baseline the rating measures. The distribution describes the catalog, not a grading curve: there is no quota in either direction, and a robot moves into a negative state the quarter the evidence supports it. The change log records every downgrade, and the states exist to be used.
Relationship to other frameworks

What HRC borrows, and where it departs.

Human Readiness Criteria sits in conversation with several existing readiness frameworks. The lineage is worth being explicit about, especially the name overlap with HRL.

ANSI/HFES 400 — Human Readiness Levels (HRL)

What we borrow

The premise that what a system can do and whether a person can use it today are separate questions, deserving separate scales. The Autonomy Ladder describes capability; Human Readiness Criteria describe consumer fit.

Where we depart

HRL is a procurement-readiness scale built for systems acquisition by trained operators. Our HRC is a household-readiness scale for ordinary consumers. The names are close enough to acknowledge the lineage; the user is different.

ISO 13482 — Personal Care Robot Safety

What we borrow

The discipline of treating safety, autonomy, and operating envelope as independent reads. A robot can be technically capable and still not safe to release into a household.

Where we depart

ISO 13482 is a conformity standard with formal certification. Our HRC is a descriptive tier. A Ready Now rating is editorial classification, not a 13482 conformance claim.

NHTSA / IIHS automotive readiness frameworks

What we borrow

The premise that a product can ship and still not be ready for general consumer use; that “available for purchase” and “ready for general adoption” are different facts.

Where we depart

Automotive readiness frameworks lean on regulatory floors. Consumer robotics has thinner regulation, so HRC reads from owner-recorded behavior and manufacturer commitments rather than crash-test thresholds.

Next up

See the 304 robots currently in Ready Now.

Browse Ready Now

Framework v2.1 · revised Aug 16, 2026 · recomputed daily across 322 robotsSuggest a correction