Technology and the built world

Robotran

Robotran is a software environment for modeling and simulating multibody systems, whose equations of motion are generated symbolically; it was developed at UCLouvain in Belgium.

Robots as a service

Robots as a service (RaaS, also Robotics-as-a-Service) is a business model in which a supplier provides robots, software, maintenance, and support for a recurring subscription or pay-per-use fee.

Robots.txt

Robots.txt, the file behind the Robots Exclusion Protocol, is a plain-text file at a website's root telling web crawlers which parts of the site they may fetch.

RobotShop

RobotShop is a Canadian online retailer and marketplace specializing in robotics technology, founded in 2003 by Mario Tremblay and based in Mirabel, Quebec, shipping to more than 200 countries.

RobotStudio

RobotStudio is an ABB Robotics PC application for modeling, offline programming, and simulation of industrial robot cells, first released in 1998 and built on the ABB Virtual Controller.

Robotti

Robotti is a driverless agricultural field robot developed by the Danish company AgroIntelli, sold from 2018, that pulls conventional implements such as seeders, hoes, and sprayers.

RoboTuna

RoboTuna is a robotic fish built at MIT in the early 1990s, led by Michael Triantafyllou, to imitate a bluefin tuna and test fish-like propulsion for underwater vehicles.

RoboTwin is a simulated dual-arm robot manipulation benchmark and synthetic-data generator for vision-language-action models, introduced at CVPR 2025 and expanded into RoboTwin 2.0 in June 2025 with 50 tasks, domain randomization, and an official leaderboard.

Robovie

Robovie is a series of interactive humanoid communication robots developed at Japan's ATR laboratories under Hiroshi Ishiguro, first sold in 2000 and widely used in human-robot interaction research.

Robust control

Robust control is a design approach in control theory that guarantees stability and performance for all plants within a predefined uncertainty class, arising in the early 1970s.

Robust Intelligence

Robust Intelligence was an AI security startup founded in 2019 by Yaron Singer and Kojin Oshiba, best known for its AI Firewall and its 2024 acquisition by Cisco.

Robust PCA

Robust PCA (RPCA, robust principal component analysis) is a family of PCA methods reliable under gross corruption, splitting a matrix into a low-rank part plus sparse outliers.

Robust tube model predictive control

Robust tube model predictive control, or tube MPC, is a robust control method in which a nominal trajectory is planned online while feedback confines the uncertain state to a tube around it.

Robust.ai

Robust.ai is an American robotics company founded in 2019 in Palo Alto, California, by Gary Marcus and Rodney Brooks, best known for its Carter warehouse robot and Grace software suite.

Robustness testing

Robustness testing is a black-box software testing method that checks how a system behaves under invalid inputs and stressful conditions, using a weak oracle that only requires the software not to crash or hang.

Robux

Robux is the virtual currency of Roblox, bought with real money or earned by creators, who can exchange qualifying earnings for cash through the Developer Exchange program.

Sep 21, 2026

Rocco Petrone

Rocco Petrone was an American mechanical engineer and NASA official who directed the Apollo 11 countdown, headed the Apollo program, and led the Marshall Space Flight Center.

Rochdale Canal

The Rochdale Canal is a 33-mile broad canal in northern England crossing the Pennines from Manchester to Sowerby Bridge; opened in 1804, it closed in 1937 and reopened in 2002.

Rock Abrasion Tool

The Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) was a diamond-tipped grinding device on the robotic arms of NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, serving as the mission's geologist's rock hammer.

Rock bolt

A rock bolt, also called a roof bolt, is a steel or composite rod anchored in drilled rock with a plate to reinforce tunnels, mines, slopes, and dams.

Rock Island Dam

Rock Island Dam is a run-of-river hydroelectric dam on the Columbia River near Wenatchee, Washington, completed in 1932 as the first dam to span the Columbia River.

Rock mass classification

Rock mass classification is a family of geotechnical methods, including RMR, Q, and GSI, that rate rock strength, discontinuities, and groundwater to estimate rock quality and tunnel support requirements.

Rock mass rating

The rock mass rating (RMR) system, also called the Geomechanics Classification, rates a rock mass from 0 to 100 using six parameters, guiding tunnel support, mining, slope, and foundation design.

Rock-fill dam

A rock-fill dam is an embankment dam built mainly of quarried rock, made watertight by an earth core, concrete face, or asphaltic membrane, and favored for seismic sites.

Rock-salt structure

The rock-salt structure is a crystal structure of two interpenetrating face-centered cubic lattices, first determined for sodium chloride by W. L. Bragg in 1913 from X-ray diffraction.

Rockchip (福州瑞芯微电子股份有限公司)

Rockchip, also known as Fuzhou Rockchip, is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company founded in Fuzhou in 2001 that designs system-on-chip processors for AIoT devices such as tablets, robots, and automotive systems.

Rockcliff Energy

Rockcliff Energy is a Houston-based private natural gas producer in the East Texas Haynesville shale, founded in 2015 and sold to TG Natural Resources for $2.7 billion in 2023.

Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Center is a large Art Deco complex of office towers, studios, and public spaces in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, built between 1932 and 1939.

Rocker (subculture)

Rockers, called Ton-up Boys in the 1950s, were a British youth subculture of motorcycle-riding, leather-clad fans of American rock and roll, famous for clashes with the mods.