Robot Facts for Kids

The very first industrial robot used on an assembly line was called Unimate.

It started working way back in 1961 at a General Motors plant in New Jersey.

Unimate was a giant mechanical arm designed to do a job too dangerous for people: lifting heavy, hot pieces of metal from a die-casting machine.

Imagine a robot that weighs about 2,700 pounds- that's heavier than a small car!

Humans didn't send the first robot to space- the Soviet Union did!

It was a satellite called Sputnik 1, launched on October 4, 1957.

Sputnik 1 was a simple, polished metal sphere about 58 cm (23 inches) in diameter with four long antennas.

Its job was just to broadcast radio pulses so scientists could study the upper atmosphere.

While humans have only walked on the Moon, robotic explorers have visited multiple worlds!

Rovers like Lunokhod 1 landed on the Moon in 1970, and others have driven on Mars.

Robotic probes have also been sent to fly by Venus and even Jupiter.

The Voyager 1 and 2 probes, launched in 1977, have actually left our solar system!

Forget small helpers- some robots are HUGE! The largest mobile humanoid robot built is Gundam.

It stands a staggering 18 meters tall. That is taller than a six-story building!

This amazing machine, based on a famous Japanese anime design, was completed around 2020.

It weighs about 25 tons- that’s the weight of about 12 large cars all stacked up!

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, learns by reading massive amounts of text and looking at pictures- we call this 'training data'.

The biggest, smartest AI models today use training datasets that can contain up to hundreds of trillions of words.

That is so much information- it’s like every book in every library in the world, many, many times over!

This huge amount of data helps the AI learn to talk, write, and even code like a human.

Long before electricity powered robots, people built amazing mechanical ones called automata.

The first one that truly worked and played music was called The Flute Player, built in 1737 by Jacques de Vaucanson.

This robot could actually play twelve different songs on a real flute!

It was powered by complex mechanical parts, not wires or batteries, making it a masterpiece of old-school engineering.

Robots aren't just for factories- they are doctors, too! This is called robotic surgery.

The da Vinci Surgical System got approval in the United States in 2000 to perform complex surgeries.

It helps surgeons work with incredible precision, controlling tiny robotic arms that don't shake one bit.

This precision means smaller cuts and faster healing for people who need operations!

We talked about Unimate being heavy, but let's compare it!

The Unimate robot, which started in 1961, weighed roughly 2,700 pounds.

That is about the same weight as 12 average-sized refrigerators stacked on top of each other.

For a machine designed to lift hot metal, being super sturdy and heavy was a major feature for kids to know!

One of the most famous walking robots was ASIMO from Honda, introduced in 2000.

ASIMO could walk at a top speed of 1.67 meters per second (about 3.7 miles per hour).

This is faster than many grown-ups walk, and it could even run a little bit!

It stood 130 cm (4 feet, 3 inches) tall- just about the height of a 9-year-old kid!

The Curiosity rover on Mars is an amazing explorer- it doesn't get tired!

As of September 27, 2025, it had traveled a distance of 35.97 kilometers (that's 22.35 miles) across the red planet.

Imagine walking over 22 miles through rough, dusty terrain- that is what Curiosity has done!

It's all to study the rocks and look for clues that Mars once had the right conditions for life.