Frequently asked questions
Questions about the Robot Expert System, its public evidence, privacy, and present availability — answered from the published record.
Each answer summarizes a current public source. Follow the source link for the authoritative wording. Where the public record does not support an answer, this page says so rather than filling the gap with a promise.
Start here
The basic model: what RES is, why it exists, and what it does not claim.
What is the Robot Expert System?
The Robot Expert System, or RES, is described as a trust-and-record layer inside an autonomous system. It applies an ordered safety floor and the Owner's additional rules, then leaves a tamper-evident record of its decision.
Source: Getting Started, About
What problem is RES intended to address?
RES is intended to make a robot's governed decisions understandable and checkable after the fact. It does not present itself as a way to make a robot faster, more capable, or wiser.
Source: Getting Started, About
Is RES ordinary robot software or a manufacturer's AI feature?
No. The public description places RES alongside a robot's capability stack as a trust-and-record layer: it governs decisions and records them rather than serving as the robot's general autonomy, planning, or capability software.
Source: Getting Started, About
Who decides what the robot is allowed to do?
The public model describes fixed Laws as the safety floor. An Owner may add rules above that floor to make them stricter, but no party may lower the floor.
Source: Getting Started, The Laws
Why should someone who does not own a robot care?
The public case is about trust: as autonomous systems act around people, the important question is not only what they can do, but whether the basis for a decision can later be checked independently.
Source: Home, WP01 — Trust Will Decide the Robot Age — Not Capability
Is RES an AI language model that decides what a robot should do?
No such claim is made. The published description presents RES as a rule-bound governance and record layer. Karel is the separate public website helper and only answers from approved public LOR information.
Source: Getting Started, About, Ask Karel
Owner control and availability
What an Owner can tighten, what no one can lower, and what is actually available today.
Can an Owner lower the safety floor?
No. An Owner may add protections or make rules stricter, but the public description says the ordered safety floor cannot be lowered by the Owner, a maker, or another party.
Source: Getting Started, The Laws, Home
Can an Owner tighten the rules?
Yes. The Owner's rules sit above the fixed floor and may make the applicable limits stricter. They do not provide a way to bypass a refusal below the floor.
Source: Getting Started, The Laws
Does RES need a permanent internet connection to make a judgment?
No. The public design says judgment runs inside the machine, and no network is required to decide.
Source: Getting Started, Proof
What happens if the network is disconnected?
Is RES available to buy or install today?
The Status page is the authoritative current answer. It describes RES as at early product maturity and in owner use; it does not claim a shipped robot or third-party deployment.
Source: Status
How do I become an Owner?
New Owner registration is not yet open. The Owners page will provide verified next steps when that process is available; this FAQ does not infer a registration process before then.
Source: Owners, Getting Started, Status
Does an Owner account give Karel access to robot information?
No. Karel's public interface states that it uses approved public website information and cannot access Owner accounts or Robot data.
Source: Ask Karel, Privacy policy
New to robot ownership
A public learning path for people asking “What do I do now?” It is information, not account setup or robot pairing.
I am new to this. Where should I start?
Start with Getting Started to understand what RES is and is not. Then read The Laws for the fixed safety floor, Proof for what can be checked after a decision, and Privacy Commitments for the treatment of Owner and bystander information. Finally, check Status for the product's current maturity and availability.
Source: Getting Started, The Laws, Proof, Privacy Commitments, Status
Can I create an Owner account now?
Will reading these pages register me or pair a robot with RES?
No. The public reading path is educational only. It does not create an Owner account, establish eligibility, pair a robot, or change a robot's behavior.
Source: Owners, Getting Started, Status
I already own a robot. Can I add RES to it today?
The public site does not make a compatibility, installation, or commercial availability claim for a particular robot. Check Status for the current product boundary rather than assuming that an existing robot can be converted or paired.
Source: Status
What will the real Owner onboarding guide cover when it is available?
Decisions, records, and verification
What the public record says can be checked after a governed decision — and the limits of that check.
How does a governed decision happen?
At a public-description level, an instruction is evaluated against the Laws and the Owner's additional rules. The robot acts or refuses, records the decision and reason, and the record can later be checked.
Source: Getting Started, The Laws
What is a decision record?
The public sources describe it as the tamper-evident, append-only record of the machine's decisions. It is intended to travel with the agent rather than depend on a remote dashboard.
Source: Proof, Privacy Commitments
What does verification prove?
Verification reports the bounded things the record can support: that the record is intact and that a decision can be re-derived and checked.
Source: Proof
What does verification not prove?
Can the record be silently altered after the fact?
Can someone else check a decision without contacting the maker?
Does the original robot have to be online for verification?
The public design says the record travels with the agent and verifies offline. Specific reviewer tooling or procedures are only described where the public Proof material says they are available.
Source: Proof
Does a GRRC certificate say that a robot is safe?
No safety certification is claimed. The current public status describes GRRC certification as covering the integrity of reasoning and the genuineness of the certificate, not general safety.
Source: Status
Privacy, household information, and Karel
How the published commitments describe bystanders, website data, and Karel’s public-information boundary.
What happens to data about visitors, children, or neighbors?
The Privacy Commitments define a bystander as someone the machine perceives who is not the Owner. The public commitment says bystander information has no passive or automatic route into the record; admission requires an explicit, attributed act and a reason for accountability.
Source: Privacy Commitments
Are privacy and accountability opposed to one another?
The public Privacy Commitments present them as complements:
A person's information can be destroyed on request, but the tamper-evident record of what the machine did cannot be altered or erased by anyone, including the owner.
Source: Privacy Commitments
What information does the website collect?
The Privacy Policy is the source of record for this website. It explains the site's use of same-site assets and its no-advertising/no-third-party-analytics posture, alongside the separate treatment of a message sent to a published contact address.
Source: Privacy policy
Are Karel questions and answers stored by this site?
No. The current Privacy Policy states that the application does not add content logging of Karel questions or answers, and that its model request is configured as stateless. Standard Azure service and security logs may still be kept under Microsoft's terms.
Source: Privacy policy
What can Karel use to answer a question?
Karel uses an approved public LOR corpus and links the public sources behind its response. The linked source, rather than Karel's wording, remains the authoritative wording.
Source: Ask Karel, Privacy policy
What should I not enter into Karel?
Do not enter personal, confidential, Owner, or Robot information. Karel is not a legal adviser, certifier, emergency service, or a source for safety-critical decisions.
Source: Ask Karel, Privacy policy
GRRC, independence, and current maturity
Who is separate from whom, what can be checked today, and what the Status page does not claim.
What is GRRC's role?
Can a maker, Owner, or robot certify itself?
What is independently checkable today?
Is this a deployed third-party or fleet product today?
No such claim is made. The Status page says there is one operator and no third-party use is claimed.
Source: Status
Technical and professional readers
The public architecture boundary for engineers, evaluators, risk readers, and anyone asking what RES does not replace.
Does RES replace a robot's autonomy or planning stack?
No. RES is described as the layer that governs and records decisions from the robot's capability stack. It is not positioned as a general replacement for the robot's autonomy, planning, or capability software.
Source: Getting Started, About
How are the Laws and Owner rules related?
The Laws form the ordered safety floor. Owner rules are additional constraints above that floor and may tighten it; they do not lower or reorder it.
Source: Getting Started, The Laws
What does an independent reviewer receive?
Does RES make a risk, insurance, or liability promise?
No. The public pages describe auditable reasoning and record integrity. They do not claim a premium reduction, a particular legal result, lower incident probability, or a general finding of insurability.
Source: Proof, Status, WP01 — Trust Will Decide the Robot Age — Not Capability
Where can a reader learn the larger trust argument?
WP01, Trust Will Decide the Robot Age — Not Capability, is the public starting paper. It frames trust—not capability—as the gating issue and points to why the party that needs to be trusted cannot simply certify itself.
Source: WP01 — Trust Will Decide the Robot Age — Not Capability, Papers
This FAQ is a guide to public information. It does not create an Owner account, pair a robot, give legal or safety advice, or replace the published Status, Proof, Privacy Commitments, or Laws pages.