97 Fun Facts About Robots

The word 'robot' comes from the Czech word 'robota', which means what?

Robota means forced labour, the unpaid work serfs owed their lords. Karel Čapek, whose 1920 play made the word famous, credited his brother Josef with coining it.

What was the name of the first industrial robot, installed on a production line in 1961?

Unimate was the first industrial robot: Joseph Engelberger's company Unimation installed it in 1961 at a car plant in New Jersey, where it lifted hot die castings off a machine.

Which branch of AI lets a robot interpret and respond to a spoken command?

Natural Language Processing is where computer science meets linguistics, giving machines the ability to understand, interpret and generate human language.

Honda's ASIMO and Star Wars' C-3PO belong to which class of robot?

A humanoid robot copies the human body plan, head, torso, arms and legs, and often mimics human gestures and expressions as well.

The first industrial robot went to work in 1961 at a New Jersey plant owned by which carmaker?

The plant was in Ewing Township near Trenton. The job, hauling scalding metal off a die-casting machine, was exactly the kind of work the robot's makers pitched as too dangerous for people.

Which play, written by Karel Čapek, introduced the word 'robot' to the world?

Karel Čapek's 1920 science fiction play 'R.U.R.' (Rossum's Universal Robots) is where the word 'robot' first appeared, referring to artificial human-like laborers.

Which component, the robot's equivalent of a muscle, turns an electrical, pneumatic or hydraulic input into force or motion?

Actuators are the robot's muscles: electric motors, hydraulic cylinders or pneumatic pistons that move the joints, while sensors carry information back the other way.

Which NASA rover successfully landed on Mars in February 2021?

NASA's Perseverance rover successfully landed in Mars's Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, as part of the Mars 2020 mission to search for signs of ancient microbial life.

Isaac Asimov's three rules for robots, introduced in his 1942 story 'Runaround', are known as what?

The Laws of Robotics debuted in 'Runaround' in 1942; the First Law forbids a robot from injuring a human or, through inaction, letting one come to harm.

ROS, begun at Willow Garage in 2007, ships main client libraries in C++, Lisp and which language?

ROS 1's main client libraries are roscpp, rospy (Python) and roslisp. Its founders pitched the project as a 'Linux for robotics'; the first commit went to SourceForge on 7 November 2007, and the libraries are BSD-licensed.

What kind of robot is the da Vinci system?

The da Vinci is a surgical robot: a surgeon at a console drives its arms through small incisions. Intuitive Surgical's system received FDA clearance in 2000.

Which robot sensor gauges the distance to an obstacle the way a bat does?

An ultrasonic sensor fires sound above 20 kHz, too high for us to hear, and times the echo; the distance is worked out from that delay and the speed of sound.

Which ancient Greek inventor is credited with creating early automatons?

Hero of Alexandria, a Greek mathematician and engineer from the 1st century AD, is known for describing and creating numerous automatons, including steam-powered devices and self-opening temple doors.

What animated film features a waste-collecting robot as its main character?

WALL-E is a love story with almost no dialogue: the last trash-compacting robot on an abandoned Earth falls for the probe EVE and follows her into space.

Which astromech droid rode in Luke Skywalker's X-wing during the attack on the Death Star?

R2-D2 sat in the droid socket of Luke's X-wing in the 1977 film and was badly damaged by Darth Vader's fire during the trench run.

Which branch of AI lets a robot improve at a task without being reprogrammed?

Machine Learning is formally defined by Tom Mitchell as a program whose performance at a task improves with experience, so the robot is never hand-coded for every case.

How many degrees of freedom does a rigid body have in three-dimensional space?

A robotic arm with 3 translational (X, Y, Z) and 3 rotational (roll, pitch, yaw) axes has a total of 6 degrees of freedom, allowing it to reach and orient its end-effector in any position and orientation in 3D space.

By ISO definition, an industrial robot must be able to move on at least how many axes?

ISO 8373 sets the floor at three axes. Most factory arms have six, which is what it takes to place a tool at any position and orientation.

Which field lets a robot interpret what its camera is pointed at?

Computer vision sits where AI meets image processing, pulling high-level understanding out of raw pixels and video so a robot can recognise what its camera is pointed at.

Which company built Spot, the yellow four-legged robot, and Atlas, the backflipping humanoid, earning a reputation for viral demo videos?

Boston Dynamics made the four-legged Spot and the humanoid Atlas famous through demo videos of Atlas doing backflips and parkour.

In business software, what does the abbreviation RPA stand for?

RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation, which uses software robots (bots) to automate repetitive, rule-based tasks typically performed by humans in business processes.

Which country is home to the industrial-robot maker FANUC?

FANUC is headquartered at the foot of Mount Fuji in Yamanashi Prefecture, and Yaskawa is based in Kitakyushu. Kawasaki and Denso round out a Japanese industrial-robot industry that leads the world.

What does a robotic arm's end-effector actually do?

To grip or work on objects is the end effector's job; it is the arm's 'hand', a gripper, welding torch or paint sprayer, the one part that actually touches the world.

What is the study of robot motion without considering the forces that cause it?

Kinematics in robotics focuses on the geometry of motion, describing the position, velocity, and acceleration of robot components without considering the forces or torques involved.

What do you call robots built to work at the scale of molecules?

Nanorobots are built at the nanoscale, 1 to 100 nanometres, and are proposed for targeted drug delivery, diagnostics and minimally invasive surgery.

What is it called when many simple robots cooperate locally to achieve a complex task?

Swarm robotics is an approach inspired by the collective behaviors of social organisms (like ants or bees) where multiple robots cooperate through local interactions and decentralized control to achieve complex tasks.

Which wearable device assists or augments a person's movement by applying mechanical force to their body?

Exoskeletons are used for stroke rehabilitation, for lifting on factory floors and by the military. Not all are robotic; passive versions use springs and counterweights instead of motors.

What is combining readings from cameras, lidar and radar into one picture of a robot's surroundings called?

Merging disparate sources produces a picture with less uncertainty than any single sensor could manage on its own.

What type of robots work alongside humans in a shared workspace, often without safety cages?

Collaborative robots, or 'cobots', are designed to interact directly with humans in a shared space or work within close proximity, often equipped with safety features to prevent harm.

Which maintenance strategy uses vibration, oil and thermal readings to decide when a machine needs repair?

Predictive maintenance watches a machine's condition, through vibration analysis, oil analysis, infrared and acoustics, and schedules repairs only when the data says failure is near.

What is the term for a robot's ability to sense and respond to physical contact or force?

Haptics, or haptic feedback, refers to technology that creates an experience of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user, allowing robots to sense and respond to physical interaction.

A vacuum that maps your home and plots its own route is which kind of robot?

An autonomous robot acts without recourse to human control, using its own sensors and software to decide where to go and what to do next.

Which sensor reports a robot joint's angle by counting marks on a rotating disc?

Encoders do this optically: light shines through slots on a disc fixed to the joint, and counting the pulses gives angular position while their rate gives speed.

The Roomba vacuum cleaner is a popular example of which category of machine?

Service robots work for people outside the factory, doing jobs that are dull, dirty or dangerous. The Roomba, launched in 2002, is the best-selling domestic example, with tens of millions sold.

Theoretical self-replicating automata are named after which mathematician?

Von Neumann laid out a kinematic model of a self-reproducing automaton in lectures in 1948 and 1949. His insight that the copying instructions must be stored separately from the machine anticipated the discovery of DNA's structure.

What is the common term for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)?

Drone is the everyday word for a UAV, an aircraft with no one aboard that is either flown remotely or flies itself, from a toy quadcopter to an armed Predator.

Which company developed the popular 'Aibo' robotic dog?

Aibo is a series of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony, first introduced in 1999, known for its advanced AI and lifelike behavior.

Which company bought the warehouse-robot maker Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012?

Amazon bought Kiva Systems in March 2012 for $775 million and renamed it Amazon Robotics in 2015; its squat orange robots carry whole shelves to human pickers.

Machines that plant seeds, spray weeds with precision and pick ripe fruit belong to which category of robot?

Agricultural robots, or agribots, now handle planting, precision spraying, harvesting and crop monitoring, getting more yield from fewer inputs.

Which branch of robotics builds biology-inspired machines from silicone and other compliant materials?

Soft robotics uses elastomers such as silicone instead of metal links, so a gripper can wrap around fruit or squeeze through gaps, mimicking octopus arms and worms.

Which manufacturer of industrial robots is headquartered in Augsburg, Germany?

KUKA is an acronym for Keller und Knappich Augsburg, the acetylene works founded there in 1898; its orange arms are a fixture of German car plants. China's Midea Group took control in 2016.

The 'Wheelbarrow' bomb-disposal robot was built in 1972 for British Army use in which conflict?

Wheelbarrow was designed by Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Miller in 1972 so British Army bomb-disposal teams in Northern Ireland could tow away car bombs during The Troubles; hundreds were later built.

What are the devices pushed through a pipeline to clean or inspect it commonly called?

'Pipeline inspection gauge' is a backronym; the name more likely comes from the squealing noise early leather-bound scrapers made. Smart pigs carry ultrasonic or magnetic sensors to find corrosion.

Which concept in robotics involves calculating the joint parameters needed to achieve a desired position and orientation of the end-effector?

Inverse kinematics is the more complex problem of determining the necessary joint angles or displacements for a robotic arm to reach a specific target position and orientation in space.

In October 2017, which country granted citizenship to the social robot Sophia?

The announcement came at an investment summit in Riyadh, and critics noted the robot received rights that Saudi women and migrant workers lacked. Sophia was built by Hong Kong's Hanson Robotics.

What handheld unit lets a technician jog an industrial robot into position and record it?

A teach pendant is the handheld console for jogging the arm and recording points. Its three-position enabling switch stops the robot if it is released or squeezed too hard.

In the three-phase model of robot control, which phase comes first?

Perception comes first: cameras, lidar and ultrasonic sensors turn the world into data, the processing phase decides, and the action phase moves.

Which Swedish-Swiss multinational corporation is one of the largest industrial robot manufacturers?

ABB was formed in 1988 by the merger of Sweden's ASEA and Switzerland's Brown, Boveri & Cie; ASEA had launched the first all-electric, microprocessor-controlled industrial robot, the IRB 6, in 1974.

Which SRI robot of 1966–72 was the first mobile robot that could reason about its actions?

Shakey, built at SRI between 1966 and 1972, combined a TV camera, bump sensors and the STRIPS planner to reason about its own actions. It was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in 2004.

Which Westinghouse humanoid robot wowed crowds at the 1939 New York World's Fair?

Elektro could speak about 700 words via a 78-rpm record player, smoke cigarettes and blow up balloons; a robot dog named Sparko joined him at the fair in 1940.

Cynthia Breazeal's 1990s robot head Kismet was built as an experiment in what field?

Kismet made facial expressions by moving its ears, eyebrows, eyelids, lips, jaw and head, and Breazeal treated their relationship like infant and caretaker.

Which Mars rover got its name from an essay by 12-year-old Clara Ma of Lenexa, Kansas?

Clara Ma's autograph is engraved on the rover itself; her essay argued that curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives.

Mars Pathfinder's 1997 rover was dedicated to which 19th-century American abolitionist?

The name came from a student essay contest won by 12-year-old Valerie Ambroise of Bridgeport, Connecticut; the rover was the first wheeled vehicle to operate beyond the Earth–Moon system.

Spirit, which got stuck in soft sand in 2009, had landed in which Martian crater in 2004?

Spirit touched down in Gusev Crater on 4 January 2004, three weeks before its twin Opportunity landed on the opposite side of the planet, and roved for about 21 times its planned 90 days before the sand trap.

Which team's DRC-HUBO robot won the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals in Pomona?

KAIST's DRC-HUBO finished the eight-task course in 44 minutes 28 seconds, ahead of Florida's IHMC Robotics, in a competition inspired by the need for robots that could work inside the damaged Fukushima plant.

Which Stanford vehicle won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge driverless race?

Stanley, led by Sebastian Thrun, finished the 212 km desert course in 6 hours 53 minutes, minutes ahead of two rivals from the Pittsburgh university he had just left.

Robby the Robot first appeared in which 1956 science-fiction film?

Robby was designed by Robert Kinoshita for Forbidden Planet and reused by MGM in The Invisible Boy the following year; he was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in 2004.

Which inventor builds the Maschinenmensch robot in Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis?

Rotwang builds the machine to resurrect his lost love Hel; the robot costume was created by sculptor Walter Schulze-Mittendorff.

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics first appeared explicitly in which 1942 story?

Runaround, published in the March 1942 Astounding Science Fiction, sends the robot Speedy into a loop on Mercury between a weak Second Law order and a strong Third Law self-preservation drive, and states the Laws explicitly.

Per the OED, which 1941 Asimov story holds the first recorded use of the word 'robotics'?

Liar!, in the May 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, introduced the mind-reading robot Herbie and the word 'robotics', which Asimov assumed already existed; it was later collected in I, Robot.

Which Japanese roboticist introduced the 'uncanny valley' concept in 1970?

Mori's original phrase was bukimi no tani genshō; the idea is that near-human replicas provoke unease right up until they become indistinguishable from people.

Robonaut 2 reached the ISS in February 2011 aboard which shuttle mission?

STS-133 was the final flight of shuttle Discovery, launched 24 February 2011; Robonaut 2 rode up in its cargo and became the first humanoid robot in space, later tested flipping switches and cleaning handrails.

Who designed the all-electric, six-axis Stanford arm in 1969?

Scheinman said his interest in robots began at age eight or nine watching The Day the Earth Stood Still; his arm's closed-form solution made it a textbook teaching example.

The SCARA assembly robot was developed under Hiroshi Makino at which Japanese institution?

Makino's lab at the University of Yamanashi designed SCARA (selective compliance assembly robot arm) in 1978; Sankyo Seiki, Pentel and NEC presented it as a new concept for assembly robots in 1981.

Reymond Clavel invented the delta parallel robot in the early 1980s at which institution?

Clavel designed the delta robot at EPFL in Lausanne after watching chocolates being packed by hand; its three parallel arms give three translations plus one rotation, and he won the Golden Robot Award in 1999.

Who applied for the first robotics patents in 1954, which were granted in 1961?

The National Inventors Hall of Fame calls Devol's patent for the first digitally operated programmable robotic arm the foundation of the modern robotics industry.

Rodney Brooks, Colin Angle and Helen Greiner founded which robotics company in 1990?

iRobot was incorporated in August 1990 as IS Robotics, an MIT spin-off, and built military and research robots such as the PackBot for a decade before the Roomba made it a household name in 2002.

The DARPA-funded quadruped BigDog, created in 2005, was shelved for what reason?

BigDog was meant to be a robotic pack mule carrying 340 pounds beside soldiers, but its gasoline engine gave away any position it walked into.

When the four-legged robot Spot went on general sale in June 2020, what was its price?

Spot weighs about 25 kg and became its maker's first commercial product; Massachusetts State Police had already tried it in a bomb squad in 2019.

Which emotion-reading semi-humanoid robot did SoftBank unveil in Tokyo in June 2014?

Pepper was built by Aldebaran Robotics and manufactured until 2020, greeting customers in banks, shops and SoftBank's own phone stores.

In 2007, which humanoid replaced the Aibo robot dog in RoboCup's Standard Platform League?

Nao, made by the French firm Aldebaran, became the league's platform from 2008 and went on to sell thousands of units to schools and research labs.

The therapeutic robot Paro, used in nursing homes, is modelled on which animal?

Paro is modelled on a harp seal pup, chosen because few people have preconceptions about seals. Designed by Takanori Shibata from 1993, it cost about US$15 million to develop and stands in for animal-assisted therapy.

Which company announced its Optimus humanoid robot at an 'AI Day' event in August 2021?

The robot, also called Tesla Bot, was first presented by a dancer in a bodysuit; a physical prototype followed at the second AI Day a year later.

Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter planned for five flights, completed how many in total?

Ingenuity flew 72 times between April 2021 and January 2024, when a rotor blade broke on landing; it had been planned for just five flights in 30 days.

Philae bounced twice on comet 67P in 2014 because which system failed to deploy?

Its harpoons never fired and the thruster meant to press it down had already failed, so Philae bounced twice and settled in a shaded spot where its solar panels could barely charge.

Agility Robotics, maker of the Digit humanoid, spun out of which university in 2015?

Jonathan Hurst's Dynamic Robotics Lab at Oregon State developed the ostrich-legged Cassie before Digit, which later went to work moving totes in warehouses.

Who built the chess-playing Mechanical Turk hoax, first displayed in 1770?

Kempelen built it to impress Empress Maria Theresa; a hidden chess master moved the pieces, and the machine beat both Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin.

The Jaquet-Droz automata (the Writer, Draughtsman and Musician) live in which Swiss city?

The three dolls, built between 1768 and 1774, belong to the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Neuchâtel; the local history society bought them in 1906 for 75,000 gold francs and donated them.

How many mechanical devices did al-Jazari describe in his 1206 book of ingenious devices?

Al-Jazari's Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices describes 50 machines, including water clocks, automatic musicians and a hand-washing automaton, each with instructions for building it.

Whose 1948 book defined cybernetics as control and communication in animal and machine?

Wiener said the word was coined by his research group with Arturo Rosenblueth in the summer of 1947, from the Greek for steersman.

What were Grey Walter's 1948–49 'tortoise' robots, Machina speculatrix, named?

Elmer and Elsie (ELectroMEchanical Robots, Light-Sensitive) were three-wheeled tortoises that steered toward light and found their own recharging hutch; one famously 'danced' before a mirror with a lamp on its nose.

What is the name of the Jetson family's robot maid in The Jetsons?

Rosie wears a frilly apron and was voiced by Jean Vander Pyl, who also voiced Wilma Flintstone.

Astro Boy, the robot hero known at home as Mighty Atom, was created by which manga artist?

Osamu Tezuka's manga ran from 1952 to 1968, and his studio's 1963 TV adaptation was the first popular animated series in the style now called anime.

'Danger, Will Robinson!' is the catchphrase of the Robot in which 1960s TV series?

The Robot of Lost in Space, officially Model B-9, also said 'That does not compute'; it was designed by Robert Kinoshita, who had designed Robby the Robot a decade earlier.

Star Wars protocol droid C-3PO claims fluency in over how many forms of communication?

Six million forms of communication is C-3PO's boast. Anthony Daniels has played the droid in every Skywalker Saga film, having asked for the role after seeing the vulnerability in Ralph McQuarrie's concept painting.

In Short Circuit (1986), what gives military robot Number 5 a human-like intelligence?

A lightning strike during a storm scrambles Number 5's circuits and makes him sentient; he flees the lab to learn about the world, voiced by Tim Blaney, and renames himself Johnny 5.

According to his backstory, Futurama's Bender was built in which Mexican city?

Bender is Bending Unit 22, unit number 1,729 (a famous 'taxicab number'), voiced by John DiMaggio; his name nods to the bending done in Mexican maquiladoras.

The hitchhiking robot HitchBOT was vandalised and destroyed in 2015 in which US city?

HitchBOT could not walk; it crossed Canada, Germany and the Netherlands by asking drivers to carry it, but its American trip ended after two weeks when it was found dismembered in Philadelphia on 1 August 2015.

What does Osaka University roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro call the android copy of himself?

Ishiguro directs the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory and has sent his Geminoid to give lectures and conference talks in his place.

Which company's Trilobite, released in 2001, was the first commercial robot vacuum?

Electrolux showed a Trilobite prototype on the BBC's Tomorrow's World in May 1996 and put it on sale in 2001, a year before the first Roomba.

Lunokhod 1, the first rover on another world, reached the Moon in 1970 aboard which craft?

Luna 17 soft-landed in the Sea of Rains on 17 November 1970 and rolled Lunokhod 1 down its ramps; the eight-wheeled rover, driven by a five-man crew on Earth, ran about 11 months instead of the planned three.

What does the name of China's 2013 lunar rover Yutu translate to in English?

Yutu means Jade Rabbit, the rabbit that lives on the Moon with the goddess Chang'e in Chinese folklore; the rover rolled off the Chang'e 3 lander on 14 December 2013.

India's Pragyan rover landed near the lunar south pole in August 2023 on which mission?

Chandrayaan-3's lander Vikram touched down on 23 August 2023 and released Pragyan, making India the first nation to land near the lunar south pole; an earlier Pragyan was lost when Chandrayaan-2's lander crashed in 2019.

Which three-word command stops the robot Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)?

'Klaatu barada nikto' is delivered by Patricia Neal's character Helen Benson; the eight-foot robot Gort never speaks and also responds to flashlight signals from Klaatu.

In Disney's 2014 film Big Hero 6, the inflatable robot Baymax was built to serve as what?

Baymax introduces himself as a 'personal healthcare companion', built by Hiro's older brother Tadashi; the character originated in a 1998 Marvel comic and is voiced by Scott Adsit.

Which actor portrays the android Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation?

Gene Roddenberry told Spiner that Data should grow more human across the series but never quite get there.

The feminine humanoid HRP-4C, first demonstrated by AIST in March 2009, has what nickname?

Miim was later upgraded to mimic human facial movements, execute dance steps and walk in a 'super-realistic' gait shown in a 2011 video.