The Rung Finder
Built for the essay Your Robot Coworker Is Still a Pilot
Which rung is that robot number on?
Built, shipped, installed, working: four counts, quoted as one, with orders sitting before the ladder. Put the next robot figure you read through five questions and see what it can and can't support.
Five questions · two minutes · nothing you type leaves your browser
The test
This instrument runs the test from Your Robot Coworker Is Still a Pilot (1 Aug 2026). The essay's rule: when a robot number arrives, ask which word it is attached to. The answer is usually in the original document, and it is usually not the rung the headline implies. Below: the ladder, the finder, and 14 published figures scored at their source, three of them not in the essay (two from 24 September).
As of 6 Oct 2026. Every quoted figure was re-opened at the linked page on 6 Oct 2026. Nothing here is estimated by us. The tool runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.
The finder
Open the original document, not the coverage, then answer from what it says. Two minutes.
The result builds as you answer. Copy it with its source link as a receipt.
Word hints appear here. They flag rung words in your sentence; they don't decide the rung. You do, below.
Free. New tools and the essays behind them, with every source shown. The button opens Substack; nothing you entered here goes with it.
Fourteen figures, scored at the source
Eleven come from documents the essay cites. Three it did not cover: Figure's April production post and AGIBOT's two figures from 24 September. Each links to the page it was read on. Press Run it to load a case's answers into the finder and check the verdict yourself.
Where the 14 figures land. Press a column to show only those.
The open rung
The essay's first falsifier, kept open with a date. It is narrowed or retired the day someone publishes the number.
- Question
- Has any company, filing or trade body published a count of humanoid robots performing unsupervised paid work (the essay's first falsifier; rung 4)?
- Status
- Not found: the essay found none (1 Aug 2026). None of the 14 figures above is a rung-4 count.
Nearest candidate: AGIBOT at Longcheer. On 15 Apr 2026 AGIBOT said: “With multiple units already in operation, AGIBOT plans to expand deployment to 100 robots by Q3 2026” (AGIBOT release). Q3 ended on 30 Sep, and no confirmation was found as of 2 Oct 2026. As a plan, the 100 sits before the ladder. The units already running have no number attached. - Checked
- 30 Sep 2026, limited to the 14 documents above; Longcheer added 2 Oct 2026
- Next check
- 31 Oct 2026
What this is not: a claim that robots aren't working. BMW's pilot robot ran about 1,250 operating hours on a live line. The claim is only that the count of robots doing so is not on any page we checked. If you have one, reply on the essay on Substack with the document and the rung it sits on.
Method and limits
Built, shipped and installed ask where the robot is. Working asks what it is doing, and how much of the time, under how much supervision. The essay adds that orders sit before the ladder: Unitree says its order volume is higher than its shipments and does not publish it.
Where the rungs come from. The definitions are the essay's, with one change: the essay defines shipped as delivered to somebody who paid for it; here, shipped means left the maker for an outside customer or partner. Orders sit before the ladder because an order counts a commitment, not a robot. Proxies are off the ladder because they count something other than robots. The essay's line on them: a company that gives hours, sites or capacity instead of units is telling you which number it will put its name to.
How cases were scored. Each figure was read at the linked page on 30 Sep 2026, re-checked there on 6 Oct 2026, and placed on the lowest rung that the document's own words support, not the rung its headline suggests. Where we rely on coverage rather than the company or a filing, the case says so.
Limits. The finder is only as good as your answers, and Q5 is the blurriest line by design: whether a theme-park greeter is “working” depends on what you think it produces. The word hints are simple keyword matches and will miss phrasing. Fourteen figures are an illustration, not a survey. The robot definitions come from one essay. See also: Humanoid Analytics (17 Aug 2026), which separates robots produced, sold, shipped, delivered, accepted and operated, and the DEPLOY registry, which tracks deployments site by site, claimed against verified, across all kinds of robots, drones and autonomous vehicles, not only humanoids. The finder's job is narrower: it lets you place any quoted figure yourself.