robot

A robot is a machine that moves and works by itself. Sometimes shaped like a person, more often like an arm on a factory floor.

The word was invented for a Czech play in 1920 and comes from a word meaning forced labour, which tells you what the play was about. Real robots are mostly industrial, and the humanoid kind remains largely fictional. The adjective robotic describes stiff mechanical movement in people too. Robotics is the field, and a robot vacuum is the version most households actually own.