Robots have the connotation of a futuristic technology. In fact, however, theyhave been around for quite a while: Simple self-operating machines,so-calledautomata, existed already in ancient Greece, and the manufacturing tradi-tion continued on into medieval times (Truitt, 2015). In the fifteenth century,Leonardo da Vinci drew plans for a humanoid robot (Moran, 2006), and inthe eighteenth century Jacques de Vaucanson built his legendary mechanicaldefecating duck (Riskin, 2003). These automata were mostly toys or pieces ofart, bespoke single pieces made not to take on work, but to entertain, to beadmired, or to serve as proof for a mechanical concept. Only in the twen-tieth century had the state of the art, in what was now called robot tech-nology, progressed far enough to be applied on a larger, commercial scale.From the first moving assembly line in a Ford factory in the early twentiethcentury (Ford.com, n.d.) it was a short way to fully autonomous robots. Theearliest concepts for industrial robots emerged in the 1930s. In 1960, the firstprogrammable digital robot was introduced. The 1970s spawned not only thefirst robotic production lines, but also the first real humanoid robots. Sincethe early twenty-first century, there even are robots in space and on Mars.In recent years, robots have been making another important step. Theyhavemadetheirwayoutoftheirfactorycagesandoutofroboticslaboratories,entering private homes and public spheres to be employed in close physicaland social proximity to humans. Today, robotics is a global industry with a50-billion-dollar turnover. In 2019, 17 million household service robots and400,000 industrial robots were sold – in addition to the two million alreadyin use (IFR, 2019; Siciliano & Khatib, 2016).