Robot Kingdom: On the Difficulty of Finding the Definition of Robots

What is a robot? In this paper, we discuss some problems for finding one, universally applicable definition of robots. Robots are technological artefacts, and new types of robots are regularly being invented and engineered. Robots are also a common topic in fiction, which continuously affects the way robots are conceived. Moreover, the perception of what counts as a robot in public discourse differs from the standard definitions of robots that can be found in academic literature. Considering that finding one adequate definition of robots seems to be impossible and the fact that robots are gaining social significance leading to a growing need to discuss them among different stakeholders and audiences, we propose to shift the way in which robots are discussed. We propose an analogy to animals: just like we can talk about the animal kingdom, we can talk about the robot kingdom, which allows for different varieties of entities that belong to this category without assuming that they all share certain necessary and sufficient properties. This allows us to focus on different representatives of the robot kingdom depending on the context of discussion instead of defining the concept of “robot” and focusing on the important characteristics of robots, which may vary for each given context. The adoption of the robot kingdom approach would facilitate and support a better interdisciplinary understanding and communication across the board fields of robot research. This would enable and promote the traveling of evidence and new research results between fields.