A stand-alone hybrid computer system that performs physical and computational activities. Capable of performing many different tasks, it is a multiple-motion device with one or more arms and joints. Robots can be similar in form to a human, but industrial robots do not resemble people at all.

The term is attributed to Czech dramatist Karel Capek in his 1921 play entitled "R.U.R. - Rossum's Universal Robots." Capek applied the Czech word "robota," which means "forced labor" or "servitude" to the mechanized people in the skit. Three years later, robots appeared in Fritz Lang's classic silent movie "Metropolis," and they have been with us ever since.

Answered by Sanket Vora , an ibibo Advisor, at 7:28 PM on February 08, 2008

Rahul, any automatically operated machine that replaces human effort, though it may not look much like a human being or function in a humanlike manner. The term comes from the play R.U.R. by Karel Capek (1920). Major developments in microelectronics and computer technology since the 1960s have led to significant advances in robotics. Advanced, high-performance robots are used today in automobile manufacturing and aircraft assembly, and electronics firms use robotic devices together with other computerized instruments to sort or test finished products.

Answered by Almighty . , an ibibo Advisor, at 12:13 PM on February 08, 2008

A robot is a mechanical or virtual, artificial agent. It is usually an electromechanical system, which, by its appearance or movements, conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own. The word robot can refer to both physical robots and virtual software agents, but the latter are usually referred to as bots to differentiate.

Answered by pooja , an ibibo Master, at 11:47 AM on February 08, 2008

Robot is a program that runs automatically without human intervention. Typically, a robot is endowed with some artificial intelligence so that it can react to different situations it may encounter. In WWW terms, search engine spider (robot) is a program that automatically fetches Web pages. Spiders are used to feed pages to search engines. It's called a spider because it crawls over the Web. Because most Web pages contain links to other pages, a spider can start almost anywhere. As soon as it sees a link to another page, it goes off and fetches it. This is useful for indexing and updating web sites. Large search engines, like Google, Yahoo have many spiders working in parallel.

Answered by A.R.Karthick , an ibibo Master, at 11:43 AM on February 08, 2008

Well Rahul in simple terms , A robot is mechanical device for performing a task which might otherwise be done by a human.
It is a user who is actually a program.

A robot is a machine that performs a function, either to aide in everyday life or simply to entertain.
A robot needs to be able to accept inputs or commands and interpret that input to produce a desired output.
For example, a welding robot must be able to interpret various instructions in order to complete a weld and a vending machine must be able to distinguish between coins before producing a soda or candy bar. This definition may imply that items such as flashlights and CD players are robots as well, but they are not. The key to this definition is that a robot must be able to interpret the input and determine what must be done with that information. A toaster will accept a butter knife as input just as easily as a slice of bread and it will still try and produce a slice of toast.

Answered by alokgupta14 , an ibibo Guru, at 11:29 AM on February 08, 2008