DEAR ROBOT, WHO ARE YOU? OR WHAT ARE YOU?: ENGLISH IN ROBOTICS

Not many plays introduce a new word to the language. One that did was Karel Čapek’s RUR: Rossum’s Universal Robots that had its premiere in Prague 100 years ago. Every time we use the word ‘robot’ to denote a humanoid machine, it derives from Čapek’s play, which coined the term from the Czech “robota” meaning forced labour.

ROBOT: HE, IT, SHE??

Is a robot ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’?

 

ANIMATE AND INANIMATE IN ENGLISH

The difference between live and unalive, animate and inanimate, or sometimes between human and non-human, personal and impersonal is an important part of grammar in many languages.

MECHANICAL CREATURES

The idea of artificial creatures that can do various operations goes back to ancient times – Ancient China, Egypt and Greece.

MINSK OPEN ROBOT TOURNAMENT

In Belarus the growing interest towards robots and robotics especially among children can be illustrated by the amount of robotics schools, clubs, and several robot tournaments.

 

'FATHERS' OF ROBOTS

The word ‘a robot’ was created by a Czech science-fiction writer Karel Čapek. He called artificial automata in his 1921 novel named R.U.R. with the new invented word ‘a robot’.

FREQUENCY OF USING

The frequency of appearance of articles about robots shows a constant growth. In the middle of the last century there could be only several articles a year about robots. But these days there could hardly be a single day without an article about or with robots or artificial intelligence.