RoboWire tracks how robotics got here and where it is going - a running history of the field alongside the projects shaping the industry right now.
Milestones that defined the field, from fiction to factories.
Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) introduces the word "robot," from the Czech robota, meaning forced labor. Science fiction gives the field its name decades before the field exists.
Isaac Asimov publishes "Runaround," laying out the Three Laws of Robotics — a fictional ethical framework that still shapes real debates about machine safety and autonomy.
The first industrial robot, Unimate, starts work on a General Motors assembly line in New Jersey, lifting hot die-cast metal parts. George Devol and Joseph Engelberger launch an industry.
Victor Scheinman's Stanford Arm becomes the first electrically powered, computer-controlled robot arm — the template for virtually every industrial manipulator since.
NASA's Sojourner rover becomes the first robot to drive on another planet, kicking off a lineage that runs through Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance.
iRobot's Roomba becomes the first mass-market home robot, proving consumers will invite autonomous machines into their living rooms — tens of millions of units later, it's still vacuuming.
Universal Robots and Rethink Robotics popularize "cobots" — arms safe enough to work beside humans without cages, opening automation to small manufacturers.
Boston Dynamics unveils Atlas, a hydraulic humanoid that would go on to run, leap, and backflip — redefining public expectations of what legged robots can do.
Large AI models meet physical machines. Warehouse fleets, surgical systems, autonomous tractors, and a wave of humanoid startups push robotics from structured factories into the messy real world.
Projects and trends moving the field right now.
Tesla's Optimus, Figure, Agility's Digit, Apptronik's Apollo, and Boston Dynamics' electric Atlas are all racing toward general-purpose humanoids, with pilot deployments in warehouses and auto plants.
Vision-language-action models are letting robots generalize across tasks from demonstration data instead of hand-coded routines — the "GPT moment" the robotics world has been waiting for.
Amazon has deployed over a million robots across its fulfillment network, from Kiva-style drive units to robotic arms like Sparrow that pick individual items from bins.
Beyond the da Vinci system's millions of procedures, research teams are demonstrating supervised autonomy in soft-tissue surgery, and new platforms are shrinking the hardware for outpatient settings.
Driverless tractors, laser weeders, and fruit-picking arms are tackling labor shortages in agriculture — one of the fastest-growing robotics markets outside the factory.
From Perseverance and its helicopter scout Ingenuity to robotic arms on lunar landers and satellite-servicing spacecraft, robots remain humanity's advance team beyond Earth.