A machine that is controlled by a computer and can do work automatically, sometimes looking or moving like a human.
In the automobile plant, a robot swiftly paints each car body the same perfect shade of red.
At home, a small vacuum robot glided under the sofa and picked up crumbs.
✦ From Czech “robot”, meaning 'forced labour', coined by writer Karel Čapek in his 1920 play “R.U.R.”.
A computer program that automatically performs repetitive tasks on the internet, such as indexing pages or answering simple questions.
A search engine robot crawls millions of web pages every day.
The chat robot on the company website answers basic shipping questions instantly.
✦ Based on the earlier sense of a mechanical robot; later applied metaphorically to software that does automated work.
A person who acts or speaks in a very mechanical, emotionless way, as if they were a machine.
During the presentation, he repeated the script like a robot, without any feeling.
After weeks of overtime, she felt like a tired robot just going through the motions.
✦ Extended figurative use from the mechanical sense of ‘robot’.
