Robot

The term robot came from the Czech language in 1923. The word was coined by Czech author Karel Capek, first used in his play (English translated name) "" The term comes from the Czech word ('forced worker'), from 'forced labor, compulsory service, drudgery,' from 'to work, drudge', from an Old Czech source akin to Old Church Slavonic () 'servitude,' from 'slave'. From Old Slavic , from PIE 'pass from one status to another'. == Summary ==

welding robots used in a factory are a type of industrial robot. There is no consensus on which machines qualify as robots but there is general agreement among experts, and the public, that robots tend to possess some or all of the following abilities and functions: accept electronic programming, process data or physical perceptions electronically, operate autonomously to some degree, move around, operate physical parts of itself or physical processes, sense and manipulate their environment, and exhibit intelligent behavior, especially behavior which mimics humans or other animals. The word robot can refer to both physical robots and virtual software agents, but the latter are usually referred to as bots. Related to the concept of a robot is the field of synthetic biology, which studies entities whose nature is more comparable to living things than to machines. Simpler automated machines are called automatons, like animatronics, often made to resemble humans or animals. Humanoid robots that resemble humans esthetically, possibly even organically, are called androids, while android can be shortened to droid, referring to robots with a broader likeness. On the other hand, a human that is augmented with artificial machines is called a cyborg, which is a particular type of transhuman. == History ==

Early beginnings 's automatic robot servant (3rd century BCE) in the Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, Athens, Greece Many ancient cultures described artificial people in their writings. Examples from Greek mythology include Galatea (the mythical statue carved by Pygmalion that came to life), Talos (a man of bronze who guarded Crete from pirates), and the mechanical servants built by the Greek god Hephaestus. Giants made of stone or clay are found in Jewish and Norse mythology. Greek engineers During classical antiquity, Greek engineers contributed many innovations. For example, in the 4th century BCE, Archytas described a steam-operated mechanical bird he called "The Pigeon", while Ctesibius improved the clepsydra and produced the first hydraulus several decades later. Philo of Byzantium described a washstand automaton. Hero of Alexandria created numerous user-configurable automated devices and described machines powered by pneumatics, hydraulics, and steam, even including a "speaking" automaton. Greek engineers also built the Antikythera mechanism — the oldest known example of an analog computer — during this period. Chinese texts Ancient Chinese texts described automata, some of which were capable of flight. For example, the Han Feizi reports that 5th century BCE Mohist philosopher Mozi and his contemporary Lu Ban built artificial wooden birds that could fly. The Liezi (attributed to Lie Yukou, a 4th-century BCE Chinese philosopher) describes humanoid automata. 's astronomical clock tower showing the mechanical figurines which chimed the hours In 1066, Chinese inventor Su Song built a water clock in the form of a tower that featured mechanical figurines that chimed the hours. His mechanism had a programmable drum machine with pegs that bumped into little levers that operated percussion instruments. The drummer could be programmed to play different drum patterns by moving the pegs to different locations. The Lokapannatti is an 11th-12th century Buddhist cosmological text that tells of how the Buddha's relics were protected by mechanical robots (bhuta vahana yanta or "spirit movement machines") until they were disarmed by King Ashoka. Mesopotamia 's musical toy, from the 13th century Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices Ismail al-Jazari was a 13th-century polymath who built several automated devices driven by hydropower, including peacocks, automatic gates, and water clocks. Among al-Jazari's humanoid automata was a waitress that could serve drinks. The drink was stored in a reservoir tank, from where it would drip into a bucket and then a cup, after which the waitress would appear out of an automatic door to serve the drink. Al-Jazari also invented a hand washing automaton that incorporated a flush mechanism similar to that used in modern flush toilets. The automaton stood next to a basin filled with water. When the user pulled a lever, the water would drain, and the automaton would refill the basin. Italy with inner workings. Possibly constructed by Leonardo da Vinci around 1495. Around 1495, Leonardo da Vinci sketched plans for a mechanical humanoid robot that was able to sit up, wave its arms and move its head and jaw. The design was probably based on anatomical research recorded in his Vitruvian Man. Da Vinci may have been influenced by the automata of al-Jazari. Different variations of the karakuri existed: the butai karakuri, which were used in theatre, the zashiki karakuri, which were small and used in homes, and the dashi karakuri which were used in religious festivals, where the puppets were used to perform reenactments of traditional myths and legends. France In France, between 1738 and 1739, Jacques de Vaucanson exhibited several automatons: a flute player, a pipe player and a duck. The duck could flap its wings, crane its neck, swallow food from the exhibitor's hand, and it gave the illusion of digesting its food by excreting matter stored in a hidden compartment. Switzerland In 1774, about 30 years later, in Switzerland, Pierre Jaquet-Droz made several mechanical figures that could write and play music. Several of these devices still exist and work. Remote-controlled systems Remotely operated vehicles were demonstrated in the late 19th century in the form of several types of remotely controlled torpedoes. The early 1870s saw remotely controlled torpedoes by John Ericsson, John Louis Lay, and Victor von Scheliha. , one of the earliest 'guided missiles' The Brennan torpedo, invented by Louis Brennan in 1877, was powered by two contra-rotating propellers that were spun by rapidly pulling out wires from drums wound inside the torpedo. Differential speed on the wires connected to the shore station allowed the torpedo to be guided to its target, making it "the world's first practical guided missile". In 1897 the British inventor Ernest Wilson was granted a patent for a torpedo remotely controlled by "Hertzian" (radio) waves and in 1898 Nikola Tesla publicly demonstrated a wireless-controlled torpedo that he hoped to sell to the US Navy. In 1903, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo demonstrated a radio control system called Telekino at the Paris Academy of Sciences, which he wanted to use to control an airship of his own design. He obtained several patents for the system in other countries. Unlike previous 'on/off' techniques, Torres established a method for controlling any mechanical or electrical device with different states of operation. The Telekino remotely controlled a tricycle in 1904, considered the first case of an unmanned ground vehicle, and an electric boat with a crew in 1906, which was controlled at a distance over 2 km. Archibald Low, known as the "father of radio guidance systems" for his pioneering work on guided rockets and planes during the First World War. In 1917, he demonstrated a remote controlled aircraft to the Royal Flying Corps and in the same year built the first wire-guided rocket. Early robots In 1928, one of the first humanoid robots, Eric, was exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Model Engineers Society in London, where it delivered a speech. Invented by W. H. Richards, the robot's frame consisted of an aluminium body of armour with eleven electromagnets and one motor powered by a twelve-volt power source. The robot could move its hands and head and could be controlled through remote control or voice control. Both Eric and his "brother" George toured the world. Westinghouse Electric Corporation built Televox in 1926; it was a cardboard cutout connected to various devices which users could turn on and off. In 1939, the humanoid robot known as Elektro was debuted at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Seven feet tall (2.1 m) and weighing 265 pounds (120.2 kg), it could walk by voice command, speak about 700 words (using a 78-rpm record player), smoke cigarettes, blow up balloons, and move its head and arms. The body consisted of a steel gear, cam and motor skeleton covered by an aluminum skin. In 1928, Japan's first robot, Gakutensoku, was designed and constructed by biologist Makoto Nishimura. The German V-1 flying bomb was equipped with systems for automatic guidance and range control, flying on a predetermined course (which could include a 90-degree turn) and entering a terminal dive after a predetermined distance. It was reported as being a 'robot' in contemporary descriptions. Modern autonomous robots The first electronic autonomous robots with complex behaviour were created by William Grey Walter of the Burden Neurological Institute at Bristol, England in 1948 and 1949. He wanted to prove that rich connections between a small number of brain cells could give rise to very complex behaviors – essentially that the secret of how the brain worked lay in how it was wired up. His first robots, named Elmer and Elsie, were constructed between 1948 and 1949 and were often described as tortoises due to their shape and slow rate of movement. The three-wheeled tortoise robots were capable of phototaxis, by which they could find their way to a recharging station when they ran low on battery power. Walter stressed the importance of using purely analogue electronics to simulate brain processes at a time when his contemporaries such as Alan Turing and John von Neumann were all turning towards a view of mental processes in terms of digital computation. His work inspired subsequent generations of robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks, Hans Moravec and Mark Tilden. Modern incarnations of Walter's turtles may be found in the form of BEAM robotics. The first digitally operated and programmable robot was invented by George Devol in 1954 and was ultimately called the Unimate. This ultimately laid the foundations of the modern robotics industry. Devol sold the first Unimate to General Motors in 1960, and it was installed in 1961 in a plant in Trenton, New Jersey to lift hot pieces of metal from a die casting machine and stack them. The first palletizing robot was introduced in 1963 by the Fuji Yusoki Kogyo Company. In 1973, a robot with six electromechanically driven axes was patented by KUKA robotics in Germany, and the programmable universal manipulation arm was invented by Victor Scheinman in 1976, and the design was sold to Unimation. Commercial and industrial robots are now in widespread use performing jobs more cheaply or with greater accuracy and reliability than humans. They are also employed for jobs which are too dirty, dangerous or dull to be suitable for humans. Robots are widely used in manufacturing, assembly and packing, transport, earth and space exploration, surgery, weaponry, laboratory research, and mass production of consumer and industrial goods. == Future development and trends ==

Various techniques have emerged to develop the science of robotics and robots. One method is evolutionary robotics, in which a number of differing robots are submitted to tests. Those which perform best are used as a model to create a subsequent "generation" of robots. Another method is developmental robotics, which tracks changes and development within a single robot in the areas of problem-solving and other functions. Another new type of robot is just recently introduced which acts both as a smartphone and robot and is named RoboHon. As robots become more advanced, eventually there may be a standard computer operating system designed mainly for robots. Robot Operating System (ROS) is an open-source software set of programs being developed at Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Technical University of Munich, Germany, among others. ROS provides ways to program a robot's navigation and limbs regardless of the specific hardware involved. It also provides high-level commands for items like image recognition and even opening doors. When ROS boots up on a robot's computer, it would obtain data on attributes such as the length and movement of robots' limbs. It would relay this data to higher-level algorithms. Microsoft is also developing a "Windows for robots" system with its Robotics Developer Studio, which has been available since 2007. Japan hopes to have full-scale commercialization of service robots by 2025. Much technological research in Japan is led by Japanese government agencies, particularly the Trade Ministry. Many future applications of robotics seem obvious to people, even though they are well beyond the capabilities of robots available at the time of the prediction. As early as 1982 people were confident that someday robots would: 1. Clean parts by removing molding flash 2. Spray paint automobiles with absolutely no human presence 3. Pack things in boxes—for example, orient and nest chocolate candies in candy boxes 4. Make electrical cable harness 5. Load trucks with boxes—a packing problem 6. Handle soft goods, such as garments and shoes 7. Shear sheep 8. Be used as prostheses 9. Cook fast food and work in other service industries 10. Work as a household robot. Generally such predictions are overly optimistic in timescale. New functionalities and prototypes In 2008, Caterpillar Inc. developed a dump truck which can drive itself without any human operator. Many analysts believe that self-driving trucks may eventually revolutionize logistics. By 2014, Caterpillar had a self-driving dump truck which is expected to greatly change the process of mining. In 2015, these Caterpillar trucks were actively used in mining operations in Australia by the mining company Rio Tinto Coal Australia. Some analysts believe that within the next few decades, most trucks will be self-driving. A literate or 'reading robot' named Marge has intelligence that comes from software. She can read newspapers, find and correct misspelled words, learn about banks like Barclays, and understand that some restaurants are better places to eat than others. Baxter is a new robot introduced in 2012 which learns by guidance. A worker could teach Baxter how to perform a task by moving its hands in the desired motion and having Baxter memorize them. Extra dials, buttons, and controls are available on Baxter's arm for more precision and features. Any regular worker could program Baxter and it only takes a matter of minutes, unlike usual industrial robots that take extensive programs and coding to be used. This means Baxter needs no programming to operate. No software engineers are needed. This also means Baxter can be taught to perform multiple, more complicated tasks. Sawyer was added in 2015 for smaller, more precise tasks. Prototype cooking robots have been developed and could be programmed for autonomous, dynamic and adjustable preparation of discrete meals. == Etymology ==

's 1920 play ''R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)'', showing three robots The word robot was introduced to the public by the Czech interwar writer Karel Čapek in his play ''R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), published in 1920. Robot'' is cognate with the German . English pronunciation of the word has evolved relatively quickly since its introduction. In the U.S. during the late 1930s to early 1940s it was pronounced . By the late 1950s to early 1960s, some were pronouncing it , while others used By the 1970s, its current pronunciation had become predominant. al military robot Cheetah, an evolution of BigDog (pictured), was clocked as the world's fastest legged robot in 2012, beating the record set by an MIT bipedal robot in 1989. The word robotics, used to describe this field of study, == Modern robots ==

Mobile robot Mobile robots have the capability to move around in their environment and are not fixed to one physical location. An example of a mobile robot that is in common use today is the automated guided vehicle or automatic guided vehicle (AGV). An AGV is a mobile robot that follows markers or wires in the floor, or uses vision or lasers. They also appear as consumer products, for entertainment or to perform certain tasks like vacuum cleaning. Mobile robots are the focus of a great deal of current research and almost every major university has one or more labs that focus on mobile robot research. Mobile robots are usually used in tightly controlled environments such as on assembly lines because they have difficulty responding to unexpected interference. Because of this most humans rarely encounter robots. However domestic robots for cleaning and maintenance are increasingly common in and around homes in developed countries. Robots can also be found in military applications. This definition is used by the International Federation of Robotics, the European Robotics Research Network (EURON) and many national standards committees. The industrial robots in food and drink processing plants are used for tasks such as feeding machines, packaging, and palletizing, which have replaced many manual, physical tasks. The complexity of digital skills required by workers varies depending on the level of automation and the specific tasks involved. When disabling a bomb, the operator sends a small robot to disable it. Several authors have been using a device called the Longpen to sign books remotely. Teleoperated robot aircraft, like the Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, are increasingly being used by the military. These pilotless drones can search terrain and fire on targets. Hundreds of robots such as iRobot's Packbot and the Foster-Miller TALON are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S. military to defuse roadside bombs or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in an activity known as explosive ordnance disposal (EOD). Automated fruit harvesting machines Robots are used to automate picking fruit on orchards at a cost lower than that of human pickers. Domestic robots domestic vacuum cleaner robot does a single, menial job. Domestic robots are simple robots dedicated to a single task work in home use. They are used in simple but often disliked jobs, such as vacuum cleaning, floor washing, and lawn mowing. An example of a domestic robot is a Roomba. Military robots Military robots include the SWORDS robot which is currently used in ground-based combat. It can use a variety of weapons and there is some discussion of giving it some degree of autonomy in battleground situations. Unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs), which are an upgraded form of UAVs, can do a wide variety of missions, including combat. UCAVs are being designed such as the BAE Systems Mantis which would have the ability to fly themselves, to pick their own course and target, and to make most decisions on their own. The BAE Taranis is a UCAV built by Great Britain which can fly across continents without a pilot and has new means to avoid detection. Flight trials are expected to begin in 2011. The AAAI has studied this topic in depth Some have suggested a need to build "Friendly AI", meaning that the advances which are already occurring with AI should also include an effort to make AI intrinsically friendly and humane. Several such measures reportedly already exist, with robot-heavy countries such as Japan and South Korea having begun to pass regulations requiring robots to be equipped with safety systems, and possibly sets of 'laws' akin to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. An official report was issued in 2009 by the Japanese government's Robot Industry Policy Committee. Chinese officials and researchers have issued a report suggesting a set of ethical rules, and a set of new legal guidelines referred to as "Robot Legal Studies." Some concern has been expressed over a possible occurrence of robots telling apparent falsehoods. Mining robots Mining robots are designed to solve a number of problems currently facing the mining industry, including skills shortages, improving productivity from declining ore grades, and achieving environmental targets. Due to the hazardous nature of mining, in particular underground mining, the prevalence of autonomous, semi-autonomous, and tele-operated robots has greatly increased in recent times. A number of vehicle manufacturers provide autonomous trains, trucks and loaders that will load material, transport it on the mine site to its destination, and unload without requiring human intervention. One of the world's largest mining corporations, Rio Tinto, has recently expanded its autonomous truck fleet to the world's largest, consisting of 150 autonomous Komatsu trucks, operating in Western Australia. Similarly, BHP has announced the expansion of its autonomous drill fleet to the world's largest, 21 autonomous Atlas Copco drills. Drilling, longwall and rockbreaking machines are now also available as autonomous robots. The Atlas Copco Rig Control System can autonomously execute a drilling plan on a drilling rig, moving the rig into position using GPS, set up the drill rig and drill down to specified depths. Similarly, the Transmin Rocklogic system can automatically plan a path to position a rockbreaker at a selected destination. These systems greatly enhance the safety and efficiency of mining operations. Healthcare Robots in healthcare have two main functions. Those which assist an individual, such as a sufferer of a disease like Multiple Sclerosis, and those which aid in the overall systems such as pharmacies and hospitals. Home automation for the elderly and disabled Robots used in home automation have developed over time from simple basic robotic assistants, such as the Handy 1, through to semi-autonomous robots, such as Care-Providing Robot "FRIEND" which can assist the elderly and disabled with common tasks. The population is aging in many countries, especially Japan, meaning that there are increasing numbers of elderly people to care for, but relatively fewer young people to care for them. Humans make the best carers, but where they are unavailable, robots are gradually being introduced. FRIEND is a semi-autonomous robot designed to support disabled and elderly people in their daily life activities, like preparing and serving a meal. FRIEND make it possible for patients who are paraplegic, have muscle diseases or serious paralysis (due to strokes etc.), to perform tasks without help from other people like therapists or nursing staff. Pharmacies Script Pro manufactures a robot designed to help pharmacies fill prescriptions that consist of oral solids or medications in pill form. The pharmacist or pharmacy technician enters the prescription information into its information system. The system, upon determining whether or not the drug is in the robot, will send the information to the robot for filling. The robot has 3 different size vials to fill determined by the size of the pill. The robot technician, user, or pharmacist determines the needed size of the vial based on the tablet when the robot is stocked. Once the vial is filled it is brought up to a conveyor belt that delivers it to a holder that spins the vial and attaches the patient label. Afterwards it is set on another conveyor that delivers the patient's medication vial to a slot labeled with the patient's name on an LED read out. The pharmacist or technician then checks the contents of the vial to ensure it's the correct drug for the correct patient and then seals the vials and sends it out front to be picked up. McKesson's Robot RX is another healthcare robotics product that helps pharmacies dispense thousands of medications daily with little or no errors. The robot can be ten feet wide and thirty feet long and can hold hundreds of different kinds of medications and thousands of doses. The pharmacy saves many resources like staff members that are otherwise unavailable in a resource scarce industry. It uses an electromechanical head coupled with a pneumatic system to capture each dose and deliver it to either its stocked or dispensed location. The head moves along a single axis while it rotates 180 degrees to pull the medications. During this process it uses barcode technology to verify it's pulling the correct drug. It then delivers the drug to a patient specific bin on a conveyor belt. Once the bin is filled with all of the drugs that a particular patient needs and that the robot stocks, the bin is then released and returned out on the conveyor belt to a technician waiting to load it into a cart for delivery to the floor. Research robots While most robots today are installed in factories or homes, performing labour or life saving jobs, many new types of robot are being developed in laboratories around the world. Much of the research in robotics focuses not on specific industrial tasks, but on investigations into new types of robot, alternative ways to think about or design robots, and new ways to manufacture them. It is expected that these new types of robot will be able to solve real world problems when they are finally realized. Bionic and biomimetic robots One approach to designing robots is to base them on animals. BionicKangaroo was designed and engineered by studying and applying the physiology and methods of locomotion of a kangaroo. Nanorobots Nanorobotics is the emerging technology field of creating machines or robots whose components are at or close to the microscopic scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters). Also known as "nanobots" or "nanites", they would be constructed from molecular machines. So far, researchers have mostly produced only parts of these complex systems, such as bearings, sensors, and synthetic molecular motors, but functioning robots have also been made such as the entrants to the Nanobot Robocup contest. Researchers also hope to be able to create entire robots as small as viruses or bacteria, which could perform tasks on a tiny scale. Possible applications include micro surgery (on the level of individual cells), utility fog, manufacturing, weaponry and cleaning. Some people have suggested that if there were nanobots which could reproduce, the earth would turn into "grey goo", while others argue that this hypothetical outcome is nonsense. Reconfigurable robots A few researchers have investigated the possibility of creating robots which can alter their physical form to suit a particular task, like the fictional T-1000. Real robots are nowhere near that sophisticated however, and mostly consist of a small number of cube shaped units, which can move relative to their neighbours. Algorithms have been designed in case any such robots become a reality. Robotic, mobile laboratory operators In July 2020 scientists reported the development of a mobile robot chemist and demonstrate that it can assist in experimental searches. According to the scientists their strategy was automating the researcher rather than the instruments – freeing up time for the human researchers to think creatively – and could identify photocatalyst mixtures for hydrogen production from water that were six times more active than initial formulations. The modular robot can operate laboratory instruments, work nearly around the clock, and autonomously make decisions on his next actions depending on experimental results. Soft-bodied robots Robots with silicone bodies and flexible actuators (air muscles, electroactive polymers, and ferrofluids) look and feel different from robots with rigid skeletons, and can have different behaviors. Soft, flexible (and sometimes even squishy) robots are often designed to mimic the biomechanics of animals and other things found in nature, which is leading to new applications in medicine, care giving, search and rescue, food handling and manufacturing, and scientific exploration. Swarm robots Inspired by colonies of insects such as ants and bees, researchers are modeling the behavior of swarms of thousands of tiny robots which together perform a useful task, such as finding something hidden, cleaning, or spying. Each robot is quite simple, but the emergent behavior of the swarm is more complex. The whole set of robots can be considered as one single distributed system, in the same way an ant colony can be considered a superorganism, exhibiting swarm intelligence. The largest swarms so far created include the iRobot swarm, the SRI/MobileRobots CentiBots project and the Open-source Micro-robotic Project swarm, which are being used to research collective behaviors. Swarms are also more resistant to failure. Whereas one large robot may fail and ruin a mission, a swarm can continue even if several robots fail. This could make them attractive for space exploration missions, where failure is normally extremely costly. Haptic interface robots Robotics also has application in the design of virtual reality interfaces. Specialized robots are in widespread use in the haptic research community. These robots, called "haptic interfaces", allow touch-enabled user interaction with real and virtual environments. Robotic forces allow simulating the mechanical properties of "virtual" objects, which users can experience through their sense of touch. Contemporary art and sculpture Robots are used by contemporary artists to create works that include mechanical automation. There are many branches of robotic art, one of which is robotic installation art, a type of installation art that is programmed to respond to viewer interactions, by means of computers, sensors and actuators. The future behavior of such installations can therefore be altered by input from either the artist or the participant, which differentiates these artworks from other types of kinetic art. Le Grand Palais in Paris organized an exhibition "Artists & Robots", featuring artworks created by more than forty artists with the help of robots in 2018. == Robots in popular culture ==

and S.J.M. on display at the Museo del Objeto del Objeto in Mexico City Literature 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 first reference in Western literature to mechanical servants appears in Homer's Iliad. In Book XVIII, Hephaestus, god of fire, creates new armor for the hero Achilles, assisted by robots. According to the Rieu translation, "Golden maidservants hastened to help their master. They looked like real women and could not only speak and use their limbs but were endowed with intelligence and trained in handwork by the immortal gods." The words "robot" or "android" are not used to describe them, but they are nevertheless mechanical devices human in appearance. "The first use of the word Robot was in Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (written in 1920)". Writer Karel Čapek was born in Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic). Possibly the most prolific author of the twentieth century was Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) who published over five-hundred books. Asimov is probably best remembered for his science-fiction stories and especially those about robots, where he 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 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 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 competitions Robots are used in a number of competitive events. Robot combat competitions have been popularized by television shows such as Robot Wars and BattleBots, featuring mostly remotely controlled 'robots' that compete against each other directly using various weaponry, there are also amateur robot combat leagues active globally outside of the televised events. Micromouse events, in which autonomous robots compete to solve mazes or other obstacle courses are also held internationally. Robot competitions are also often used within educational settings to introduce the concept of robotics to children such as the FIRST Robotics Competition in the US. Films Robots appear in many films. Most of the robots in cinema are fictional. Two of the most famous are R2-D2 and C-3PO from the Star Wars franchise. Sex robots The concept of humanoid sex robots has drawn public attention and elicited debate regarding their supposed benefits and potential effects on society. Opponents argue that the introduction of such devices would be socially harmful, and demeaning to women and children, while proponents cite their potential therapeutical benefits, particularly in aiding people with dementia or depression. Problems depicted in popular culture 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. Frankenstein (1818), often called the first science fiction novel, has become synonymous with the theme of a robot or android advancing beyond its creator. Other works with similar themes include The Mechanical Man, The Terminator, Runaway, RoboCop, the Replicators in Stargate, the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica, the Cybermen and Daleks in Doctor Who, The Matrix, Enthiran and I, Robot. Some fictional robots are programmed to kill and destroy; others gain superhuman intelligence and abilities by upgrading their own software and hardware. Examples of popular media where the robot becomes evil are 2001: A Space Odyssey, Red Planet and Enthiran. The 2017 game Horizon Zero Dawn explores themes of robotics in warfare, robot ethics, and the AI control problem, as well as the positive or negative impact such technologies could have on the environment. Another common theme is the reaction, sometimes called the "uncanny valley", of unease and even revulsion at the sight of robots that mimic humans too closely. More recently, fictional representations of artificially intelligent robots in films such as A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Ex Machina and the 2016 TV adaptation of Westworld have engaged audience sympathy for the robots themselves. Emancipation or revolution as a theme in relation to robots was already present in the term coining play of R.U.R. The Star Wars universe for example has several instances of droid revolts. The Dune series on the other hand has the premise of humans revolting against thinking machines and finding human-biological alternatives to them. == See also ==