If you mean "will be" rather than "is", I'd agree. Otherwise, it's just a kind of reductio ad absurdum to stretch the definition of "robot" to include any machi

If you mean "will be" rather than "is", I'd agree. Otherwise, it's just a kind of reductio ad absurdum to stretch the definition of "robot" to include any machine. The key differentiating factors (any one will do) seem to be resemablance to humans/animals (not all that relevant here, I'd expect), being self-propelled, and being able to perform complex tasks. It's debatable how to define "complex", but I'd say that, for example, telling time, as a sibling comment suggests, does not qualify, no matter how complex the mechanism required to do it well happens to be. Similarly, a machine that washes items that have been carefully loaded (and maybe even pre-treated by scraping food debris) by a human, such as a current dishwasher, is also not performing a complex task. Doing so to a haphazardly-filled bus tray or sink, however, would be.