Learn the ABCs of Robots & sing along with Adabot, Minerva, & Ruby!

Isaac Asimov is writing to Big Dog

Cyborg standing there flying a Drone

Elektro’s headed to the FIRST convention, 

Gettin there w GPS, but Hexapods at home

Make robot friend, not robot enemy

Make robot fun, don’t hurt no one

iRobot walks, Jacquard looms,

Kinect can see in 3-Deeee

But Line Following bots, they only see two

Manufacturing is an important use

And Nanotech will be someday soon

And let’s not forget that Obstac–le A–voooiiidance

Pros–thet–ic Limbs, and all the QRIO toyyys – dance

Make robot friend, not robot enemy

Make robot pal, anyway you know how

Roombas and self-driving cars are smart

But mechanical turks have a human heart

Underwater Open Source robots dive

Robotic Vision let’s ‘em see the ocean life

Wildcats hoppin’, X-RHex relaxes,

Y-Series printer movin’ up-n-down the Zeee-axiiiisss

*ahem*

Make robot friend, not robot enemy

Make robot fun, don’t hurt no one

Make robot friend, not robot enemy

Make robot pal, anyway you know how

Learn more about some of the famous robots & humans mentioned in R is for Robots.

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov was a prolific writer who wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification.

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Elektro

Elektro is the nickname of a robot built by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in its Mansfield, Ohio facility between 1937 and 1938. Seven feet tall (2.1 m), weighing 265 pounds (120.2 kg), humanoid in appearance, he could walk by voice command, speak about 700 words (using a 78-rpm record player), smoke cigarettes, blow up balloons, and move his head and arms. 

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Jacquard Loom

The Jacquard machine is a device fitted to a power loom that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with such complex patterns as brocade, damask and matelassé. It was invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804. The loom was controlled by a "chain of cards"; a number of punched cards laced together into a continuous sequence.

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QRIO

QRIO ("Quest for cuRIOsity", originally named Sony Dream Robot or SDR) was a bipedal humanoid entertainment robot developed and marketed (but never sold) by Sony to follow up on the success of its AIBO entertainment robot. QRIO stood approximately 0.6 m (2 feet) tall and weighed 7.3 kg (16 pounds). QRIO's slogan was "Makes life fun, makes you happy!"

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Mechanical Turk

The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player, was a fake chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century. From 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854 it was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was eventually revealed to be an elaborate hoax.

Read more on wikipedia

This guide was first published on Aug 15, 2019. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.