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Robot- a mechanical machine that is guided by a computer program or electric circuitry

History of robots dates back to ancient legends where there was a humanoid made of clay or wood and worked on cranks and levers. A legend in ancient China, Lie Zi text, written in the 3rd century BC. Within it there is a description of a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. He presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork. The mechanic was able to walk, talk and bow down to the audience. The king thought that he was fooling them and ordered for him to be executed but he quickly started showing the king the inside of the mechanic which was filled with different levers and screws and bolts. The king spared his life and he was known as the best mechanic around.

Early water clocks are sometimes grouped in with the beginning of robotics. They began in China in the 6th century BC and the Greco-Roman world in the 4th century BC where the Clepsydra is known to have been used as a stop-watch for imposing a time limit on clients' visits in Athenian brothels. Water clocks, along with sundials, are likely to be the oldest time-measuring instruments, with the only exceptions being the vertical gnomon and the day-counting tally stick. Where and when they were first invented is unknown. The bowl-shaped outflow is the simplest form of a water clock and is known to have existed in Babylon and in Egypt around the 16th century BC. Other regions of the world, including India and China, also have early evidence of water clocks, but the earliest dates are less certain. Some authors, however, claim that water clocks appeared in China as early as 4000 BC.

The Cosmic Engine, a 10-metre (33 ft) clock tower built by Su Song in Kaifeng, China in 1088, featured mechanical mannequins that chimed the hours, ringing gongs or bells among other devices. Al-Jazari (1136–1206), an Arab Muslim inventor during the Artuqid dynasty, designed and constructed a number of automatic machines, including kitchen appliances, musical automata powered by water, and the first programmable humanoid robot in 1206. Al-Jazari's robot was a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. His mechanism had a programmable