Are they really robots?

[RoboMaster]

But then they would be more mechanisms or machines. I know what can be done with just mechanics, but I'd be pretty impressed if you were able to make a full fledged "robot" like a hobby robot out of just mechanical parts. Even RC cars have electronics for the radios and stuff.

I'll even give a link to something (mostly) mechanical: A mechanically programmed Lego car: http://tinkernology.blogspot.com/201...-computer.html I would still call this a robot because: it has multiple robot-y aspects as described above, and I would count this unique way of programming still programming and "deciding for itself."

What I'm talking about is like if you scrapped all electronics on your FRC robot, had a really long hand crank with a universal joint that gives power to the wheels, and a similar hand crank for directly altering the steering. That's more of a very fancy mechanism.

But I guess people might want to call even that a robot because of its robot-y qualities. I guess I'd be ok with that if it really is robot-y enough. Times change and the term robot is loosely applied, like the dishwasher analogy in reverse. That's why I include robot aspects as part of my personal definition above.



Here's something I thought of: on Mythbusters they often build "robots/mechanisms" to run their experiments. They call them robots. Are they really robots? Would that apply?