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List of fictional robots and androids

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of fictional robots and androids
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This list of fictional robots and androids is chronological, and categorised by medium. It includes all depictions of robots, androids and gynoids in literature, television, and cinema; however, robots that have appeared in more than one form of media are not necessarily listed in each of those media. This list is intended for all fictional computers which are described as existing in a humanlike or mobile form. It shows how the concept has developed in the human imagination through history.

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"Maschinenmensch" from the 1927 film Metropolis. Statue in Babelsberg, Germany.

Robots and androids have frequently been depicted or described in works of fiction. The word "robot" itself comes from a work of fiction, Karel Čapek's play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), written in 1920 and first performed in 1921.

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Theatre

  • Coppélia, a life-size dancing doll in the ballet of the same name, choreographed by Marius Petipa with music by Léo Delibes (1870)
  • The word robot comes from Karel Čapek's play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), written in 1920 in Czech and first performed in 1921. Performed in New York 1922 and an English edition published in 1923. In the play, the word refers to artificially created life forms.[1] Named robots in the play are Marius, Sulla, Radius, Primus, Helena, and Damon. The play introduced and popularized the term "robot". Čapek's robots are biological machines that are assembled, as opposed to grown or born.

2024 Oliver and Claire, retired helperbots in the Tony awards winning musical Maybe Happy Ending

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Literature

18th century and earlier

  • The woman forged out of gold in Finnish myth The Kalevala (prehistoric folklore)
  • From 600 BC onward, legends of talking bronze and clay statues coming to life have been a regular occurrence in the works of classical authors such as Homer, Plato, Pindar, Tacitus, and Pliny. In Book 18 of the Iliad, Hephaestus the god of all mechanical arts, was assisted by two moving female statues made from gold – "living young damsels, filled with minds and wisdoms". Another legend has Hephaestus being commanded by Zeus to create the first woman, Pandora, out of clay. The myth of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, tells of a lonely man who sculpted his ideal woman, Galatea, from ivory, and promptly fell in love with her after the goddess Aphrodite brought her to life.
  • The 5th-century BCE Chinese text, the Liezi, contains a description of a humanoid machine which can sing and dance like a human. The automaton is presented to King Mu of Zhou by its inventor, but it offends the king by winking at court ladies and trying to flirt with them, so the inventor disassembles it to show the court that it is a machine. The king sees that it has artificial analogues of human organs, which are made of leather, wood, glue, and paint, and each fulfill necessary functions for its operation.
  • Talos, bronze giant Talos in Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica, 3rd century BC
  • Brazen heads, attributed to numerous scholars involved in the introduction of Arabian science to medieval Europe, particularly Roger Bacon (13th century)
  • Golem – The legend of the Golem, an animated man of clay, is mentioned in the Talmud. (16th century)
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Radio

Music

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Film

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Television films and series

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Comics

Comic books/graphic novels

American

British

Other European

  • Otomox, the self-proclaimed "Robot Master" by André Mavimus (writer) and Roger Roux (artist) (1943)[37]
  • RanXerox, a mechanical creature made from Xerox photocopier parts, by Italian artists Stefano Tamburini and Tanino Liberatore; first appeared in 1978, in Italian, in the magazine Cannibale

South American

Manga (Japanese comics)

Comic strips

  • Robotman (1985) in the comic strip of the same name, which eventually became "Monty". Robotman left the strip and found happiness with his girlfriend Robota on another planet.

Web comics

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Web-based media

  • Stella 4D, a.k.a. Manager 45, on GO Moonbase;[39] first appears in episode 26

Animated shorts/series

Machinima

  • Lopez, Church and Tex, characters from the Rooster Teeth machinima Red vs. Blue. Only Lopez is a true artificial life-form, as both Church and Tex existed only as ghosts. Both characters were blown up during the course of the series, existing from that point onward in robot bodies other than their originals. They possess mechanical bodies similar to Lopez in design.

Podcasts

  • Little Button Puss, character from Episode #310 of the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast, played by John Gemberling. Little Button Puss, a.k.a. HPDP69-B, is a promotional robot built by Hewlett-Packard and is the first ever robot created with a fully sentient artificial intelligence, personality, and speaking function. It was designed by HP engineers for the express purpose of sexually pleasing humans. Comedy Bang! Bang! host Scott Aukerman was sent Little Button Puss as part of a promotional advertising campaign for the line of sex-robots. Little Button Puss looks like a metal dog, and has small flesh patches where its genitals are. Elsewhere, it is described as having the appearance of "nickel blue, gun metal". In a brief look into its past, Little Button Puss recounts an old romantic relationship with its long lost love, United Flight 93, who "died in the September 11th attacks".[45]
  • The Co-Host 3000 (later Sidekick 3000), character from the Spill and Double Toasted podcasts, voiced by Tony Guerrero.
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Computer and video games

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See also

Notes

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