The word “robot” was coined in K. Čapek’s play ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’ in 1920, which depicted artificial beings created to perform manual labour. The word “robot” (“robota: in Czech) literally means “drudgery”. Well before this, in 1770, “The Mechanical Turk” was exhibited, which played chess very well, but this turned out to just be a clever conjuring trick, with an expert chess player hiding inside a cabinet attached to a mechanical body, which moved chess pieces at the direction of the hidden player via its mechanical arm. The Mechanical Turk toured the courts of Europe for decades, beating Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin, amongst others. From this early excursion into mechanical men, robots have fascinated science fiction writers and filmmakers. Famous examples include the robot Maria in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), Robbie the Robot in Forbidden Planet (1956) and the android character Bishop in Aliens (1986).
The first real robot was produced by inventor George Devol from Kentucky, who developed and patented a programmable robotic arm called Unimate in 1954. His patent was bought by Joseph Engelberger, who founded the Unimation company in 1962 and produced the first industrial robots. Controlled by vacuum tubes as digital switches, the first sale was to General Motors in 1961, for die casting and spot welding of car bodies. This coincided with the first steps into artificial intelligence (AI), the phrase being coined at a conference in 1956 at Dartmouth College.
The first mobile robot was Shakey, developed by Stanford University in the 1960s and 1970s. This robot combined computer vision, spatial mapping and an overall software control program, and has a camera, bump detectors and a push bar. This was the pioneer for modern robots. In parallel, AI was developing, with the ELIZA natural language program created at MIT in 1965; the first expert system, DENDRAL, appeared the same year. In 1970 the humanoid robot WABOT-1 and its successor WABOT-2 was developed by Waseda University in Japan. The Furby domestic robot pet appeared in 1998, a year after the Sojourner robotic explorer landed on Mars, exploring the planet’s surface for 83 days. The Roomba consumer vacuum cleaner appeared in 2002, and by 2024 there were estimated to be over 36 million robots in use in the world, over 4 million in factories. The densest population of robots is in South Korea, followed by Singapore and China, with the USA ranked just tenth.
All these robots and self-driving vehicles rely heavily on artificial intelligence. Robots need to interpret data from the environment in which they operate, and potentially learn from their past experiences, adapt to new tasks and make decisions. Machine learning allows robots to analyse data and recognise patterns, such as interpreting images from robotic cameras and other sensors, which in the case of autonomous vehicles usually includes LIDAR. Some robots can communicate with humans, using natural language processing. They can even use machine learning models to predict their own component failures, a form of predictive maintenance. Reinforcement learning allows robots to learn via trial and error, for example, learning to walk.
Robots offer many benefits in terms of productivity, consistency of operation and quality. Robots are routinely used in surgery, and can perform some actions better than human surgeons. They don’t get tired or go on strike, and can carry out some tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as dealing with toxic chemicals or heavy loads. They can operate in environments unsafe for humans, such as nuclear facilities or deep in the ocean. A humanoid robot called Robonaut-2 has been used on the International Space Station since 2011. Down on earth, robots are commonly used in warehouses, retrieving goods from shelves and packing them up for delivery. Amazon claimed that they have a million robots now in use at their facilities, as of June 2025.
By carrying out tasks that are dangerous for humans, robots can improve worker safety, though there is another side to this. The first person to be killed by a robot was a Ford Motors worker, Robert Williams, in 1979. Tesla alone has reported 51 fatalities associated with its cars. However, in general, driverless cars have a lower accident rate than human-driven vehicles. We have yet to find a way for robots to behave according to the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics, intended to ensure robots do not harm humans. Robots certainly have some economic impact, and have been the subject of various economic studies. One MIT study noted that an increased use of robots had a negative effect on wages and jobs, especially in the manufacturing sector. Jobs such as welders and machinists are clearly affected. A 2024 study found that the use of robots drove up wage inequality. However, robots create jobs too. South Korea and Japan, which use robots extensively, also have low unemployment. For all the advances made, it has to be said that robots are currently mostly used in tasks that are quite specific, such as welding metal or retrieving goods from a warehouse shelf. We have yet to see a robot that is able to adapt to a range of novel or complex environments, or handle nuanced human interactions that require empathy. Although there would be obvious potential benefits in using robots to help the elderly, given the ageing population, at present, the technology is just insufficiently adaptable to operate safely in a home environment. Tasks that a human finds easy, such as folding laundry or using a kitchen knife to chop vegetables, are still hard for robots to master, though progress is being made.
One interesting development is the emerging ability of robots to act collaboratively. Drones can already operate in swarms without centralised control, which allow for spectacular drone displays analogous to firework displays, but also have plenty of darker implications for military use. Armies are already devising defences against drone swarms.
It seems likely that, despite some limitations, robots will continue to be adopted in more and more aspects of our daily lives. The global robotics industry is already worth $53 billion, and growing at around 15% or more annually, depending on which analyst you believe. Growth in Asia, such as China, is particularly marked. Robotics, much of it driven by artificial intelligence, is no longer the stuff of science fiction, but is steadily encroaching on our lives.
