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Article: Robotics
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Science and Religion
- Author:
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Robotics
The term
robot
derives from the Czech word
robota,
which means slavery, drudgery, or compulsory labor. In 1920, the Czech author Karel C
̌
apek (1890-1938) wrote a play entitled
R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots,
where he used
robota
for machine-humans, giving rise to the English word
robot.
The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov coined the term
robotics
as the field of academic study of the construction of robots. This connection to fiction points already to the utopian and eschatological elements in the science of robotics.
Kinds of robots
Basically, one can distinguish between industrial robots and artificial intelligence (AI) robots. Industrial robots are ...