| Date | Significance | Robot Name | Inventor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Third century B.C. and earlier | One of the earliest descriptions of automata appears in the Lie Zi text, on a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou (1023–957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter allegedly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork. | Yan Shi | |
| First century A.D. and earlier | Descriptions of more than 100 machines and automata, including a fire engine, a wind organ, a coin-operated machine, and a steam-powered engine, in Pneumatica and Automata by Heron of Alexandria | Ctesibius, Philo of Byzantium, Heron of Alexandria, and others | |
| c. 420 B.C.E | A wooden, steam propelled bird, which was able to fly | Archytas of Tarentum | |
| 1206 | Created early humanoid automata, programmable automaton band | Robot band, hand-washing automaton, automated moving peacocks | Al-Jazari |
| 1495 | Designs for a humanoid robot | Mechanical knight | Leonardo da Vinci |
| 1738 | Mechanical duck that was able to eat, flap its wings, and excrete | Digesting Duck | Jacques de Vaucanson |
| 1898 | Nikola Tesla demonstrates first radio-controlled vessel. | Teleautomaton | Nikola Tesla |
| 1921 | First fictional automatons called "robots" appear in the play R.U.R. | Rossum's Universal Robots | Karel Čapek |
| 1930s | Humanoid robot exhibited at the 1939 and 1940 World's Fairs | Elektro | Westinghouse Electric Corporation |
| 1948 | Simple robots exhibiting biological behaviors | Elsie and Elmer | William Grey Walter |
| 1956 | First commercial robot, from the Unimation company founded by George Devol and Joseph Engelberger, based on Devol's patents | Unimate | George Devol |
| 1961 | First installed industrial robot. | Unimate | George Devol |
| 1973 | First industrial robot with six electromechanically driven axes | Famulus | KUKA Robot Group |
| 1975 | Programmable universal manipulation arm, a Unimation product | PUMA | Victor Scheinman |
Some of these robots
Unimate
Digesting Duck
Rossum's Universal Robots
History of ASIMO
Elektro and Sparko
