Astounding Facts About Robots
"We're fascinated with robots because they are reflections of ourselves" —Ken Goldberg
A robot is a machine designed to carry out one or more tasks quickly and precisely. A robot can be controlled remotely by a human operator, but there are many different kinds of robots for different tasks.
Robots are used in factories to build things like cars, in military tactics, to find objects underwater, and for going into buildings where there might be bombs.
That's the dictionary definition.
But we all know that when it comes to robots, their ability to carry out tasks quickly isn't exactly what fascinates us. Movies, books, and popular culture, in general, don't tend to focus on the speed and precision of robots. What we're interested in, more than anything, is the ways that they're almost like us... while still being entirely different. We're interested in their mechanical approximations of human behavior.
So as we all continue to wait and watch while more human-like robots are invented everyday... here's some facts to tide you over. Below are 41 astounding facts about these mechanical beings.
Robots Facts
41. Origins
The word "robot" comes from the Czech word robota, which means "forced labor." It originally referred to peasants, who were obligated to work for their lords under the Fuedal system.
Today, the term is used to describe any man-made machine that can perform work and other human tasks.
40. R.U.R.
The first use of the word robot was in the 1920 play R.U.R.:Rossum’s Universal Robots by Czech writer Karel Čapek. In the play, the robots overthrow their human creators.
Almost 100 years later, and not much as changed. Apparently, we've been telling stories about our future robot-overlords since we first understood what robots were.
39. da Vinci’s Car
One of the earliest examples of robotic design dates back to 1478 and Leonardo da Vinci.
Da Vinci’s car was a spring-driven autonomous system that was probably created, more than anything, to cause a sensation at court.
Which we have to assume it would have. At a time when most people would have been impressed by a particularly big horse, imagine showing up to a meeting by driving what would have looked like a gigantic clock.
