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Part II

1. THE WORD ‘ROBOT’ AND ITS ETYMOLOGY

Read the following text and fill in the gaps with the words from the box:

There is no one definition of robot which satisfies everyone. So, many people have their own definitions. For example, Joseph Engelberger, a pioneer in (1) __________ robotics, once remarked: "I can't define a robot, but I know one when I see one." According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a robot is "any automatically operated (2) __________ that replaces human effort, though it may not resemble human beings in appearance or perform functions in a humanlike manner". Merriam-Webster describes a (3) __________ as a "machine that looks like a human being and performs various complex acts (as walking or talking) of a human being", or a "device that automatically performs complicated and often (4) _________ tasks", or a "mechanism guided by automatic controls".

The word robot was introduced to the public by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), published in 1920. The play begins in a (5) __________ that makes artificial people called robots. They can plainly think for themselves, though they seem happy to serve. The main (6) __________ of the play is whether the robots are being exploited and the consequences of their treatment.

However, Karel Čapek himself did not (7) __________ the word. He wrote a short (8) __________ in reference to an etymology in the Oxford English Dictionary in which he named his brother, the painter and writer Josef Čapek, as its actual originator. In an article in the Czech journal Lidové noviny in 1933, he explained that he had originally wanted to call the creatures laboři ("workers", from Latin labor). However, he did not like the word, and sought advice from his brother Josef, who suggested "roboti". The word robota means literally "work", "labor" or "serf labor", and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech and many Slavic languages. Traditionally the robota was the work period a serf (corvee) had to give for his lord, typically 6 months of the year. Serfdom was outlawed in 1848 in Bohemia, so at the time Čapek wrote R.U.R., usage of the term robota had broadened to include various (9) __________ of work.

The word robotics, used to describe the study of robots, was (10) __________ by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.

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