Know your 'bots? ?? #1

How well do you know robots and cobots? Out of my own curiosity, I have done a little research and took out the best information for you. To make it more fun, I thought - why not make it through a public poll and see how many of us get it right? ??

So, as you have seen, the question of this week was: "What is the origin of the word robot?". I thought this was a perfect question to kick off this knowledge blog so I hope you liked it too! Another reason why I chose it, is a bit biased - I come from the Czech Republic. ?? If you have gotten the answer to this question right (as 67% of you did!), you might see, where I am heading...

The correct answer

Yes, the right answer was Czech, and the word "robot" comes from a Czech word "robota". "Robota" describes forced work used throughout medieval Europe. Back in the days, tenant farmers had an obligation to perform work for their landlords on private landed estates. Only some centuries later, the famous Czech artist Josef ?apek took an inspiration in this word and suggested to his brother, writer Karel ?apek to alter this expression to name artificial workers.

In 1921, Karel ?apek published a science-fiction play R.U.R. - Rossum's Universal Robots. (Do the last two words together sound familiar to you? ??) And so, the history was written - the word "robot" has since then been commonly used in English and many other languages!

Thank you for reading

I hope you have learned something new about robots, more is coming next Monday! ??

Zuzka