Hardware

Teach Pendant

A teach pendant is a handheld control terminal connected to an industrial robot controller, used to jog the robot through waypoints, record positions, edit programs, and manage operating modes. Pendants typically include a touchscreen or keypad, a three-position enabling switch that must be held in its middle position for motion, and an emergency stop, as required by industrial robot safety standards. Waypoint programming via pendant remains the dominant method for deploying traditional industrial arms.

Why it matters for physical AI

The slow, expert-driven pendant workflow is precisely what learned policies and demonstration-based programming aim to replace, making it the baseline against which the economics of foundation-model-driven automation are judged.