Definition: Robot

By Jack Krupansky

(1) A robot is a machine that is capable of autonomously performing tasks in the physical world. A robot may have the ability to move about in the physical world or to manipulate objects in the physical world. A robot may or may not have the ability to communicate with other robots, people, or other software entities.

(2) A robot is a computer software program (or software agent) that monitors a computing environment to monitor and enforce rules.

(3) A robot is a computer software program which "crawls" the Web, otherwise known as a web crawler.

See the Wikipedia article for "robot".

See the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition for "robot".