ABCNEWS.com : What Defines a Machine as a Robot? The Meaning of Robots

April 23 — To you, that boxy thing in your kitchen that sprays soap and water on your dirty dishes and is decorated with plastic buttons may look like a regular old dishwasher. But some say that machine is really a robot.

A dictionary defines “robot” as a mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human, and is capable of performing a variety of often-complex human tasks on command, or by being programmed in advance.

But engineering professor and robotics expert Ken Goldberg of the University of California at Berkeley has a more exact definition.

“It responds to its environment and it can manipulate its environment. It can do things,” he says, in reference to modern dishwashers that can sense how dirty the dishes are and change its own settings accordingly

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