Robots have always been a part of every child’s, sci-fi writer, engineer, and geek fantasies. Their near-limitless powers, abilities of flight, awesome weaponry, and sheer cool looks are the stuff of science fiction and have influenced various genres of art and literature.

The word “robot” was coined by Czech writer Karel Capek in 1921 for his play “Rossum’s Universal Robots.” He envisioned “artificial people” he called robots who were capable of independent thought but who were mainly used as servants by humans. Later works of fiction varied in their depiction of robots; in some works they appeared as highly anthropomorphized, having faculties of speech similar to and behaving just like humans, while in others they had little to no resemblance at all to human beings and lacked any obvious intelligence.

In reality, most current robots are boring to look at and conjure little of the glamour that comic books and science fiction stories bestow on them. For example, industrial robots, while sturdy and powerful, don’t look at all like the mechas of anime and science fiction.

For many years now, robots have been used as a teaching and learning tool. For example, the Turtle robot designed in the late 1940s saw widespread use in the 1980s as a tool for computer science and mechanical engineering training. The Heathkit Educational Robot, or HERO, also saw widespread use as a teaching aid for electronics and programming. Now, robots are being used to study human interaction and development.

Hideki Kozima, a Japanese scientist studying cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence, and robotics, designed two robots for studying human interaction and social communication. For his first project, Infanoid, he developed an anthropomorphized robot that interacts with children. Through eye contact, various facial expressions, and arm and torso actions, Infanoid elicits reactions from children that shed light on how they learn to socialize, empathize, and express other emotions.

Another of Kozima’s robots is a small, yellow, snowman-shaped robot named Keepon (“key-pong”). Keepon is primarily used to study social development in younger children. Keepon helps to teach children about attention and emotion through the use of direct eye contact and simple movements.

Both Infanoid and Keepon are also being used to study and remedy pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs) in children, such as autism, Asperger’s syndrome, and Down syndrome. By studying the interactions between the robots and children afflicted with such disorders, the exact symptoms can be identified and profiled. Also, the interactions with the robots affect notable changes in the children’s behavior; those with difficulty in inter-personal communication appear to feel secure when interacting with Infanoid and Keepon. Some even learn to extend their interaction to other people who they previously extended no interaction with.

Whether fictional or real, robots are certainly one of mankind’s greatest inventions. At this point, we have barely managed to find all possible uses for robots. Given more development in the fields of artificial intelligence robots may yet reach the point where fiction becomes reality.