robot workspace
A robot's workspace is the full region of space its working tip can actually reach — the invisible bubble of all the spots its hand, gripper, or tool can get to without the robot tearing itself apart. Think of standing in one place and sweeping your arm around: the curved volume your fingertips can touch is your personal workspace. A robot has exactly the same kind of limit, set by how long its segments are and how far each joint is allowed to swing. Anything inside the bubble it can serve; anything outside it simply cannot reach, no matter how cleverly it twists.
Engineers split this bubble into two nested zones. The bigger one is the reachable workspace: every point the tip can touch in at least one way. The smaller one tucked inside it is the dexterous workspace: the points the tip can reach from every direction, arriving at any angle you like. The difference matters in practice. A welding robot might be able to touch a far corner (reachable) but only with its torch pointing the wrong way, so it cannot actually do the weld there (not dexterous). Near the very edge of the reachable bubble the arm is stretched almost straight and loses nearly all its freedom to reorient, which is why useful work happens comfortably inside, not at the fingertips of the reach.
Knowing the workspace shape is one of the first things a designer figures out, because it decides where the robot can be placed and what jobs it can take on. The shape depends entirely on the robot's build: a SCARA arm carves out a flat puck-shaped region, a classic six-jointed arm sweeps a rounded hollow shell, and a delta robot owns a shallow dome above its work surface. Lay out a factory cell well and every part to be handled sits inside the dexterous zone; lay it out badly and the robot keeps straining at its limits, stalling, or refusing the move.
When mounting a robot beside a conveyor belt, an integrator first overlays the robot's reachable bubble onto the belt. Parts arriving in the center of the bubble can be picked from any angle; parts drifting toward the rim can only be grabbed in one awkward pose, so the belt is positioned so all the action stays in the comfortable middle.
Placing the work where the dexterous zone lands — not at the edge of reach — keeps every pick smooth.
Reachable means the tip can touch the point at least one way; dexterous means it can touch it from any orientation — the dexterous zone is always a subset of the reachable one.