The direct answer
Where does frontier robot-component information usually appear first? Product and SDK changes appear in manufacturer engineering pages and release repositories; methods and independent measurements appear in papers and artifacts; interface and safety boundaries appear in standards; corporate and invention signals appear in filings and patents; public programmes expose awards and policy; events and trade media surface leads.
What can RCI republish? There is no channel-wide yes. Of 96 channels, 8 use an open/public-record default, 21 require the exact item's license, 40 support fact extraction plus original commentary, 13 require permission before protected content is reproduced, and 14 are lead-only. Even the open class requires exact-file and third-party checks.
What should become evidence? A media report, event listing or community post can identify a question. The published claim should resolve to the responsible exact product, version, paper, standard, filing, dataset or independent test and retain its conditions and rights boundary.
Discover broadly; publish narrowly. RCI can cite facts and write original analysis far more often than it can copy tables, figures, manuals, photographs, standards text or complete articles.
Nine source groups do different jobs
| Source group | Channels | Primary | Direct monitors | Operational role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standards & protocols | 16 | 16 | 0 | Defines terminology, interfaces, conformance and safety boundaries; titles and status are citable, normative content often needs permission. |
| Research | 12 | 8 | 5 | Finds methods, experiments and artifacts; rights attach to each paper, repository, dataset and figure. |
| Industry data | 8 | 6 | 0 | Tracks shipments, markets and association data; preserve period and methodology and avoid copying paid charts. |
| Patents & filings | 12 | 12 | 1 | Provides time-stamped invention, issuer and financial records; filing existence is not proof of product performance or delivery. |
| Open engineering | 5 | 4 | 2 | Exposes code, packages, BOMs and maintainer discussion; public visibility is not a license or a passed hardware test. |
| Manufacturer engineering | 14 | 14 | 6 | Responsibility source for exact products, releases, firmware, lifecycle and support; evidence remains manufacturer-reported unless independently tested. |
| Government & programs | 9 | 9 | 1 | Tracks public programs, regulation, awards and reusable government material with item-level third-party checks. |
| Events & field signals | 9 | 0 | 0 | Surfaces launches, exhibitors and field questions; verify technical claims upstream and use original reporting or licensed media. |
| Trade media | 11 | 0 | 1 | Provides discovery and attributed context; all material technical and commercial conclusions require upstream resolution. |
The directory deliberately separates discovery from responsibility. All 11 trade-media channels are lead-only and none is counted as primary. All 14 manufacturer-engineering channels are primary for their own products and releases, but they remain manufacturer evidence rather than independent validation. All 16 standards/protocol channels are primary for their own documents, yet 11 default to a permission-required reuse class.
Five reuse classes answer “can we repost this?”
| Class | Channels | Default action | What RCI can publish | What RCI cannot assume |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OPEN Open / public record | 8 | Reuse only after checking the exact page or file, its attribution requirements and third-party credits. | Original RCI analysis and properly attributed material within the item-level grant. | That every asset on an open or government channel is public domain, CC-licensed or endorsement-free. |
| ITEM_LICENSE Check item license | 21 | Resolve the license of the exact paper, repository, dataset, release asset or file before reuse. | Facts, original commentary and any material the exact license permits with required attribution. | That a platform-level policy licenses every deposited paper, figure, binary, model or third-party dependency. |
| FACTS Facts + commentary | 40 | Extract a small number of verifiable facts, preserve version and date, write original analysis and link upstream. | Bibliographic, release, specification, filing or event facts with RCI-authored explanation. | Permission to mirror tables, charts, manuals, photographs, full PDFs, long text or branded assets. |
| PERMISSION Permission to republish | 13 | Use identifiers and public facts; request the applicable license or permission before reproducing protected content. | Standard numbers, titles, editions, status and original commentary with direct links. | Rights to reproduce or translate normative clauses, test material, figures, member documents or certification marks. |
| LEAD Lead source only | 14 | Use the report to discover a claim, then trace it to a responsible manufacturer, paper, filing, standard or independent dataset. | Minimal attributed context and RCI's own reporting after upstream verification. | That rewritten announcements, interviews, forecasts, rankings or event copy are independent technical evidence. |
The classes are conservative operating defaults, not legal conclusions for every item. A Zenodo record may expose CC0 metadata while its files use another license. A GitHub repository may license source code while binaries, models, documentation and dependencies carry separate terms. A government page may include contractor photographs or third-party reports.
The first stage covers all five robot-hardware layers
| Layer | Channels | Primary | Direct monitors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Motion & actuation | 61 | 41 | 10 |
| Perception & sensing | 73 | 51 | 15 |
| Compute & control | 93 | 66 | 16 |
| Power & energy | 59 | 38 | 9 |
| Interfaces & integration | 92 | 65 | 16 |
These counts overlap: a standards body, conference, filing portal or engineering channel can cover several layers. They show operational reach, not 378 unique sources. Power and energy currently has the smallest directory surface at 59 channels, while compute/control and interfaces/integration reach nearly the entire cross-industry map.
From signal to publishable evidence
| Stage | Input | Required output | Gate |
|---|---|---|---|
| discover | Trade media, events, research indexes, release feeds and public programs | A dated lead with a direct URL and a specific claim or change to investigate | A lead is not publishable technical evidence. |
| resolve responsibility | Lead plus manufacturer, standards body, author repository, regulator or filing portal | The responsible source for the exact product, release, document, dataset or statement | If responsibility cannot be resolved, keep the item as a lead. |
| fix identity | Responsible source | Exact model, revision, date, version, commit, document number or filing identifier | Do not merge family-level and exact-model evidence silently. |
| check rights | Exact page or file plus terms, license and third-party notices | One of five use classes and item-specific reuse guidance | Public access alone never grants blanket republication rights. |
| extract evidence | Fixed source and rights decision | Minimal facts, conditions, evidence state, limitations and original RCI analysis | Do not turn manufacturer claims, source presence or CI status into independent device validation. |
| publish and monitor | Reviewed claim or research asset | Canonical page, immutable data, citation record, correction path and source-monitoring cadence | Search submission and crawler access are measured separately from publication. |
This is why the public source directory records source group, geography, language, access, signal, cadence, monitor method, exact use class and reuse guidance instead of exposing an undifferentiated bookmark list.
One bounded audit of 137 endpoints
The 2026-08-10 network run checked 137 source, rights and monitor endpoints. It observed 112 reachable responses, 13 automation-restricted responses, 0 explicit broken responses and 12 timeouts or other errors requiring manual review.
One bounded network run over source, rights and monitor endpoints. A reachable response is not a content-quality, rights or future-uptime guarantee. Automation restrictions and transient errors require manual review; zero explicit broken responses means no audited endpoint returned the script's definitive broken class, not that every page is permanently healthy.
Method and limits
The atlas aggregates the immutable RCI Source Intelligence Directory v0.1.2. Group, layer, primary-channel, monitor and reuse-class counts are direct field counts; no quality, authority or openness score is inferred.
- The directory is a curated operational map, not a claim to contain every robotics publication, company, event, standard or regional portal.
- Layer counts overlap because one source may cover several hardware layers; they must not be summed into a unique-source total.
- Use classes are conservative defaults for a channel. The exact item, file, figure, dataset, code dependency and third-party credit can impose different rights.
- Primary means responsible or authoritative for the recorded signal, not independent, unbiased or sufficient to establish performance.
- Network reachability is a bounded observation. Authentication, robots controls, rate limits, geography and transient failures can change independently of editorial value.
Download the atlas
Download the immutable JSON release and record-level CSV. Stable aliases are current JSON and current CSV. The underlying 96-channel ledger remains available as JSON and CSV.
Suggested citation: Robot Component Index. “Where Robot Component Intelligence Comes From: 96 Channels, 69 Primary Sources, Five Reuse Classes.” RCI 038, version 0.1.0, 2026-08-10. https://robotcomponentindex.com/research/robot-component-industry-source-atlas/
For version-aware BibTeX and machine citation records, use Cite RCI. For evidence labels and correction rules, use the methodology.