What is a social robot? The word “robot” comes from the 1920 play Rossum’s Universal Robots by Czech writer Karel Čapek, and literally means “slave” in Czech. In industry, the term has mostly been used for machines that perform some heavy, dangerous or repetitive tasks for us. The primary purpose of a social robot, on the other hand, is not to perform physical tasks, but to interact with humans. An example from science fiction is C-3PO in Star Wars, which is a “protocol droid” skilled in etiquette, customs, and translation, and knows over six million languages, but is very seldomly seen using its arms and hands.