[ 'rəʊbɒt ]
■ 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 (in sense 2).
3》 S. African a set of automatic traffic lights.
Derivatives
~ization or ~isation noun
~ize or ~ise verb
Origin
from Czech, from ~a 'forced labour'; the term was coined in K. Čapek's play R.U.R. 'Rossum's Universal Robots' (1920).