Problems depicted in popular culture

Fears and concerns about robots have been repeatedly expressed in a wide range of books and films. A common theme is the development of a master race of conscious and highly intelligent robots, motivated to take over or destroy the human race. (See The Terminator, Runaway, Blade Runner, RoboCop, the Replicators in Stargate, the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica, The Matrix, and I, Robot.) Some fictional robots are programmed to kill and destroy; others gain superhuman intelligence and abilities by upgrading their own software and hardware. Examples of popular media where the robot becomes evil are 2001: A Space Odyssey, Red Planet and Enthiran. Another common theme is the reaction, sometimes called the "uncanny valley", of unease and even revulsion at the sight of robots that mimic humans too closely. Frankenstein (1818), often called the first science fiction novel, has become synonymous with the theme of a robot or monster advancing beyond its creator. In the TV show, Futurama, the robots are portrayed as humanoid figures that live alongside humans, not as robotic butlers. They still work in industry, but these robots carry out daily lives.
Manuel De Landa has noted that "smart missiles" and autonomous bombs equipped with artificial perception can be considered robots, and they make some of their decisions autonomously. He believes this represents an important and dangerous trend in which humans are handing over important decisions to machines.
Marauding robots may have entertainment value, but unsafe use of robots constitutes an actual danger. A heavy industrial robot with powerful actuators and unpredictably complex behavior can cause harm, for instance by stepping on a human's foot or falling on a human. Most industrial robots operate inside a security fence which separates them from human workers, but not all. Two robot-caused deaths are those of Robert Williams and Kenji Urada. Robert Williams was struck by a robotic arm at a casting plant in Flat Rock, Michigan on January 25, 1979. 37-year-old Kenji Urada, a Japanese factory worker, was killed in 1981; Urada was performing routine maintenance on the robot, but neglected to shut it down properly, and was accidentally pushed into a grinding machine.

Timeline

Date	Significance	Robot name	Inventor
1st century AD and earlier	Descriptions of over a hundred machines and automata, including a fire engine, wind organ, coin-operated machine, and steam-powered aeliopile, in Pneumatica and Automata by Heron		Ctesibius, Philo, Heron, and others
1206	Early programmable automata	Robot band	Al-Jazari
c. 1495	Designs for a humanoid robot	Mechanical knight	Leonardo da Vinci
1738	Mechanical duck that was able to eat, flap its wings, and excrete	Digesting Duck	Jacques de Vaucanson
19th century	Japanese mechanical toys that served tea, fired arrows, and painted	Karakuri toys	Hisashige Tanaka
1921	First fictional automata called "robots" appear in the play R.U.R.	Rossum's Universal Robots	Karel Čapek
1928	Humanoid robot, based on a suit of armor with electrical actuators, exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Model Engineers Society in London	Eric	W. H. Richards
1930s	Humanoid robot exhibited at the 1939 and 1940 World's Fairs	Elektro	Westinghouse Electric Corporation
1948	Simple robots exhibiting biological behaviors	Elsie and Elmer	William Grey Walter
1956	First commercial robot, from the Unimation company founded by George Devol and Joseph Engelberger, based on Devol's patents	Unimate	George Devol
1961	First installed industrial robot	Unimate	George Devol
1963	First palletizing robot	Palletizer	Fuji Yusoki Kogyo
1973	First robot with six electromechanically driven axes	Famulus	KUKA Robot Group
1975	Programmable universal manipulation arm, a Unimation product	PUMA	Victor Scheinman