← All Explained guides

Explained / Core measurement

1,000 operating hours can be impressive.
It is still not an uptime percentage.

Runtime counts activity. Uptime or availability compares usable time with a defined period in which the robot was expected to work.

01

Two numbers that answer different questions

Runtime is accumulated operating time. It tells us how much activity was recorded under the publisher's rules. Availability asks what share of scheduled operating time the system could perform its required function.

To calculate a meaningful availability percentage, we need the scheduled interval and a defined downtime total for the same system, task and observation window.

Runtime

How much operating time was accumulated?

Scheduled time

How much time was the system expected to be ready for the task?

Downtime

How much of that scheduled time was it unable to perform the required function?

02

A worked example

Suppose one robot is scheduled for 100 hours. Under a stated rule, it is unable to perform the task for 8 of those hours. Its measured availability for that window would be 92%. This is a hypothetical example, not a result for any robot in the database.

Now suppose a company only reports 92 operating hours. We still cannot calculate availability: we do not know whether 100, 120 or 200 hours were scheduled, or which pauses counted as downtime.

03

Why calendar duration does not solve it

A deployment that lasted a year was not necessarily scheduled around the clock. A robot may work one shift, selected days or only when material is available. Calendar duration therefore cannot replace scheduled operating time.

The same caution applies to fleet totals. One thousand hours accumulated across ten robots is different from one robot operating for one thousand hours, even when both totals are accurate.

04

How HumanoidUptime reports it

HumanoidUptime records a published runtime total when its meaning and source are clear. It records availability separately and leaves it undisclosed unless a qualifying source provides the required value or inputs.

That is why a record can contain substantial runtime and task output while availability, intervention rate, MTBF and MTTR remain unknown.

References

Technical grounding

  1. NIST / SEMATECHReference

    Assessing Product Reliability ↗

    Background on reliability evidence, operating time and failures.

  2. NASAReference

    Reliability-Centered Maintenance Guide for Facilities and Collateral Equipment ↗

    Reference for operational availability, downtime and the relationship between reliability and maintainability.

Next step

Use the concept
on a real record.

The explanation becomes useful when you can trace a public number back to its source and limits.

Explore reliability records