Is R2-D2 the most famous robot of all time? He’s one of them, anyway. In fact, he’s a charter member of the Robot Hall of Fame.

This institution was the brainchild of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, renowned for its robotics research. Two categories of robots are eligible for the Hall of Fame. They are described below, with the names of the robots inducted since 2003:

• Robots fromScience –real robots used by industry or daily life
  • Mars Pathfinder-Sojourner Rover (2003)
  • Unimate (2003)
  • Asimo (2004)
  • Shakey (2004)
  • Aibo (2006)
  • Scara (2006)
• Robots fromScience Fiction – fictional robots from books and movies that have entered into our imagination
  • HAL 9000 (2003)
  • R2-D2 (2003)
  • Astro Boy (2004)
  • Robby, the Robot (2004)
  • C-3PO (2004)
  • David fromAI (2006)
  • Maria fromMetropolis (2006)
  • Gort (2006)