Robot

The word robot comes from the Czech word robota, industrial labor. A robot is an electro-mechanical device that can perform physical tasks that have been preprogrammed or result from information derived from sensors on the robot or external to it. A robot may act under the direct control of a human or autonomously under the control of a computer program designed to act on the sensory information it receives. Robots include industrial machines that are usually devoted to performing repetitive task, humanoid robots that resemble humans in form and respond to stimuli, nano-robots that are built at molecular scale, and swarm robots that communicate with each other and perform tasks in unison. Humanoid robots (sometimes called androids) are common in science fiction stories. However, such robots are yet to become commonplace in reality and much development is still required in the field of artificial intelligence before they approach the robots of sci-fi.