Abstract
The concept of the robot originated, during the 20th century, and then influenced many areas of human activities in the fields of science, engineering, and economy, but also the arts and culture in general, to a considerable extent. This contribution sketches very briefly the original meaning of the notion of a robot, and then some of the transformations of the original meaning, and some of the influences of the concept of robot during the past century. The currently unreflected fact — the roots of the idea of artificial life as well as the idea of robots in Karel Čapek’s famous play R. U. R. — is also mentioned.
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This work was presented in part at the First European Workshop on Artificial Life and Robotics, Vienna, Austria, July 12–13, 2007
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Horáková, J., Kelemen, J. Artificial living beings and robots: one root, variety of influences. Artif Life Robotics 13, 555–560 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-008-0502-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-008-0502-z