From the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz and R2D2 in Star Wars to the more recent Transformers, robots have inspired many little future scientists. Modern children have played with robot toys, watched robot animations, and read robot stories. Those kids have eventually grown up to lead the frontiers of robot technology, changing the shape of the future world. The incredible history of robots is all about science catching up with human imagination, a constant dialog between imaginative fiction and actual scientific discoveries. The concept of or the desire for robot-like creatures traces far back, almost to the birth of human imagination. In The Iliad, Homer tells the myth of Hephaistos, the Greek god of metal working, who has helpers made of gold that spin and weave. This and many other ancient stories show that people have long dreamed of inanimate creatures that can do their monotonous or difficult work.

Then, in early modern times, the first invention that laid the foundation for robotics was perfected―clocks. The mechanisms that ran them were called clockworks. The 17th century is known to have been the golden age of clockwork automatons. Walking toy soldiers were built, along with toy ducks that drank water and toy boys that over and over would write a single letter with a pen. These moving dolls were distant ancestors to today's robots. They were merely capable of repeating the same action. Still, they marked the beginning of modern mechanical engineering and kept alive the dream of robots. Further advances of mechanical engineering have given sharper edges to the imaginary machines that work for human beings. The term robot, referring to such artificial creatures, was first coined in Czech writer Karel Capek's play, Rossum's Universal Robots (1920). Robot is a Czech word for slave. In this play, robots are specifically made to do the hard labor so that human beings can live lives of leisure and comfort. This vision of automatic workers did not take long to be realized. In 1937, the earliest known industrial robot was completed, opening the first phase of robotics―the age of industrial robots.