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What is a robot? For many people the first thought that pops up when thinking of a robot is a human-like machine, made of metal parts, which might even make 'cute' robotic sounds. We tend to see robots as highly intelligent beings that have emotions and feelings. They are basically humans made of metal and silicon instead of flesh and blood. This idea of what a robot is, is however very narrow. There are machines in our lives that we might not give the label robot, but that we ascribe just as many emotions to. On the other hand, there are also robots that are being used every day that we don't anthropomorphize. Let's take a closer look at these examples.
Droids
As was mentioned before, a robot is often seen as a human-like machine, one that in the future might even have its own consciousness. Human-like machines are however not the only things we humans anthropomorphize. Other machines often get the same treatment even though they aren’t robots. A good example of this are cars. And yes, I know what you’re thinking, aren’t cars these days so chuck-full of computers we might as well call them robots? While you might have a point there, computers have only been added to cars in the last few decades. Cars have for the longest time been anthropomorphized, even been advertised as man’s most cherished companion. They are often talked about in terms of he or she or in other terms of endearment like “my baby”.
Machines
On the other end of the spectrum, we have robots that are in all senses of the word a robot, but don’t get anthropomorphized. An example of this would be a sorting robot used in industries to sort through trash. There is nothing particularly romantic or human about a trash sorting robot, but they are very helpful to us humans. We see these bots as highly advanced machines but not as smart beings. We typically don’t project any emotions on them and don’t view them as companions. They are useful, but they are not our friends.
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