Robohub.org
 

Robot centenary – 100 years since ‘robot’ made its debut


by
12 March 2022



share this:

Robotics remained at the leading edge of technology development in 2021, yet it was one hundred years earlier in 1921 that the word robot (in its modern sense) made its public debut. Czech author Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) imagined a world in which humanoids called ‘roboti’ were created in a factory. Karel’s brother, the artist and writer Josef Čapek had first coined the term robot before Karel adopted it for this theatrical vision.

The Slavic root of the word is even older and even its first known appearance in English dates back nearly two hundred years. During the time of the Habsburgs and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, robot referred to a form of forced labour similar to slavery. In Čapek’s play, the roboti were being manufactured as serfs to serve human needs.

Nowadays we would see Čapek’s creations more as androids rather than robots in the modern sense. However, the outcome of the play, with the robots rebelling against the humans and taking over the world, has since become a trope of science fiction which persists to this day. And yet the intended message in Čapek’s play wasn’t about the inherent risks of robots but of the dehumanising dangers of rampant mechanisation. We know that popular culture has taken a different reading from the play, of course, with robots on screen and in print more likely to be cast as the bad guy, although there are some notable exceptions, too. It’s interesting to wonder how different the mainstream image of robots might be today if Čapek’s play had placed his roboti and their owners in a more mutually benevolent relationship.

Čapek’s robots first appeared on the screen in a BBC television production of R.U.R. in 1938. Three years later the word ‘robotics’ was first used as a term for the field of research and technology that develops and manufactures robots. Like ‘robot’ in its modern sense, ‘robotics’ also has its origins in the creative imagination, thanks to a man who was born in the same year that the Čapek brothers were bringing the modern ‘robot’ into the world. Science fiction writer Isaac Azimov famously coined his three laws of robotics, which continue to resonate in discussions about the ethical use of robots, in 1941. Incidentally, Azimov wasn’t a fan of the play itself but his laws were designed precisely to prevent the kind of tragedy imagined in Čapek’s play.




euRobotics AISBL is a Brussels based international non-profit association for all stakeholders in European robotics.
euRobotics AISBL is a Brussels based international non-profit association for all stakeholders in European robotics.





Related posts :



Researchers are teaching robots to walk on Mars from the sand of New Mexico

  02 Sep 2025
Researchers are closer to equipping a dog-like robot to conduct science on the surface of Mars

Engineering fantasy into reality

  26 Aug 2025
PhD student Erik Ballesteros is building “Doc Ock” arms for future astronauts.

RoboCup@Work League: Interview with Christoph Steup

and   22 Aug 2025
Find out more about the RoboCup League focussed on industrial production systems.

Interview with Haimin Hu: Game-theoretic integration of safety, interaction and learning for human-centered autonomy

and   21 Aug 2025
Hear from Haimin in the latest in our series featuring the 2025 AAAI / ACM SIGAI Doctoral Consortium participants.

AIhub coffee corner: Agentic AI

  15 Aug 2025
The AIhub coffee corner captures the musings of AI experts over a short conversation.

Interview with Kate Candon: Leveraging explicit and implicit feedback in human-robot interactions

and   25 Jul 2025
Hear from PhD student Kate about her work on human-robot interactions.

#RoboCup2025: social media round-up part 2

  24 Jul 2025
Find out what participants got up to during the second half of RoboCup2025 in Salvador, Brazil.

#RoboCup2025: social media round-up 1

  21 Jul 2025
Find out what participants got up to during the opening days of RoboCup2025 in Salvador, Brazil.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence