Ok this is one I got on a while back on youtube. After feeling underwhelmed on a "robot" they used on Mythbusters I started to think what is the line between robot and a machine.

Just how complex does a machine need to be before it can be called a robot?

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The victories from those skilled in warfare are not considered of great wisdom or courage, because their victories have no miscalculations
- SUN-TZU

Technically, I believe a robot is just a machine with some automatic component to it.

Yes, but what is the line. When can you say, "That is a robot."?

Because a Cuckoo clock is a robot using a loose definition of “robot”. But I would not call it a robot.

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The victories from those skilled in warfare are not considered of great wisdom or courage, because their victories have no miscalculations
- SUN-TZU

Well no, I wouldn't either, but it doesn't fulfill a function of automaticism overreaching enough to be classified as a robot by most standards.

After all, a cuckoo clock only fulfills the function of an advanced hourglass, since its movement is static, and only directed one way.

I suppose I should retract my previous explanation, and offer a better one. A machine is a device with one way movement, which only works in one direction no matter what happens to it. A robot will have a 'choice', depending on a set of predetermined circumstances, and can function in a number of different ways.

Actually the difference is in the funtionality. A machine is built for a singular purpose where as a robot is a machine that is built modular and usually programable to a certain degree. Robots generally may serve many funtions sometimes many simultainiously and are generally capable of of some type of complex independant automation where as a machine is nearly always very simple.

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I dont know, lol. I always thought of robots being a little more complex, in movement especially. Where as machines can be just as advanced, but maybe not as mobile. But then again, i think of war machines that are so complex, they may as well be called robots. Very confusing. But what about AI? Has that got something to do with it all?