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List
of Robots in Fiction
Robot
Facts
The first digitally operated and programmable robot, the
Unimate, was installed in 1961 to lift hot pieces of metal from
a die casting machine and stack them.
The word robot was introduced
to the public by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's
Universal Robots), which premiered in 1921. Karel Čapek had
gotten the word from his brother Josef, who suggested "roboti".
The word robota means literally work, labor or serf labor, and
figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech and many Slavic
languages.
The word robotics, used to
describe this field of study, was coined (albeit accidentally)
by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.
Many ancient mythologies
include artificial people, such as the mechanical servants built
by the Greek god Hephaestus (Vulcan to the Romans), the clay
golems of Jewish legend and clay giants of Norse legend, and
Galatea, the mythical statue of Pygmalion that came to life.
More on Robots in History
Fears and concerns about
robots have been repeatedly expressed in a wide range of books
and films. A common theme is the development of a master race of
conscious and highly intelligent robots, motivated to take over
or destroy the human race such as
The Terminator, Runaway,
Blade Runner,
Robocop, the Replicators in Stargate, the Cylons in
Battlestar Galactica,
The Matrix, and
I, Robot.)
Robotic characters, androids
(artificial men/women) or gynoids (artificial women), and
cyborgs (also "bionic men/women", or humans with significant
mechanical enhancements) have become a staple of science
fiction.
The most prolific author of
stories about robots was Isaac Asimov (1920–1992), who placed
robots and their interaction with society at the center of many
of his works. Asimov carefully considered the problem of the
ideal set of instructions robots might be given in order to
lower the risk to humans, and arrived at his Three Laws of
Robotics: a robot may not injure a human being or, through
inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; a robot must obey
orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders
would conflict with the First Law; and a robot must protect its
own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with
the First or Second Law. These were introduced in his 1942 short
story "Runaround", although foreshadowed in a few earlier
stories. Later, Asimov added the Zeroth Law: "A robot may not
harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm";
the rest of the laws are modified sequentially to acknowledge
this.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first passage in
Asimov's short story "Liar!" (1941) that mentions the First Law
is the earliest recorded use of the word robotics. Asimov was
not initially aware of this; he assumed the word already existed
by analogy with mechanics, hydraulics, and other similar terms
denoting branches of applied knowledge.
Robot Characteristics
While there is no single
correct definition of "robot", a typical robot will have several
or possibly all of the following properties.
* It contains an artificial substance. (They are now attaching
microchips to cockroaches and other bugs.)
* It can sense its environment, and manipulate or interact with
things in it.
* It has some ability to make choices based on the environment,
often using automatic control or a preprogrammed sequence.
* It is programmable.
* It moves with one or more axes of rotation or translation.
* It makes dexterous coordinated movements.
* It moves without direct human intervention.
* It appears to have intent or agency.
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