It's really unclear who they could mean. A few of the people in the History of Robotics Wikipedia article[0] didn't have PhDs[1], but seemingly all of them had

It's really unclear who they could mean. A few of the people in the History of Robotics Wikipedia article[0] didn't have PhDs[1], but seemingly all of them had some higher education. Maybe they are referring to someone who wrote fiction about the idea of robots before robotics really existed: Karel Čapek (who came up with the word "robot") had a PhD though[2]. Perhaps it refers to L. Frank Baum, as he appears to have had no higher education[3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_robots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_robots [1] See William Grey Walter for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Grey_Walter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Grey_Walter [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_%C4%8Capek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_%C4%8Capek [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum#Childhood_and_early_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum#Childhood_and_ea...