Bringing Social Robots to Preschool: Transformation or Disruption?

Abstract

Did you know . . . The word “robot” was first used in a play called Rossum’s Universal Robots by Czech writer Karel Čapek in 1920. Čapek actually derived the word from the Czech word “robota,” which means “forced labor” or “drudgery.” The play tells the story of a group of artificial humans (robots) who are created to do work for their human creators, but who eventually rebel against their creators and take over the world. The play helped to popularize the idea of robots in science fiction. Since then, the word “robot” has come to be used to describe any artificial or mechanical device that can be programmed to perform a specific task or set of tasks.