robot

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
robot /ˈrəʊbɒt/

▶noun

• 1 a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer.

• 2 another term for crawler (sense 2).

• 3 S. African a set of automatic traffic lights.

– derivatives
robotization (or robotisation) noun,
robotize (or robotise) verb.

– origin from Czech, from robota ‘forced labour’; the term was coined in K. Čapek's play R.U.R. ‘Rossum's Universal Robots’ (1920).