So, this is a bit of an offshoot of an off-topic discussion that occurred over on HWF.

What exactly does the term android imply? Or robotic? Do robots have emotions? What about androids? Where do cyborgs fall into the mix? Are they more like an android, or more of a human?

Thoughts?

Thanks for starting this topic, Varon.

In my personal experience with sci-fi, I have always taken "robot" to be a very generic term, of which "android" is a specific subset that implies a robot with extremely advanced AI and human appearance. When I hear "android," I assume it is a robot made to look and act as human as possible. Consequently, I expect an android to either replicate human emotions or be attempting to.

Androids possessing human emotions is a sci-fi trope all its own, and one I'm rather fond of myself. I love a good humanesque android, whether it's taken for granted or accompanied by the usual "Can a robot have human emotions?" debate. Never gets old for me. And there's quite a bit of both story and emotional potential with human-like robots. Astro Boy is a great example of this.

"Cyborg," on the other hand, I take to mean a human augmented with robotic parts. While an Android is definitely a robot simply made to look human, I usually assume a cyborg began as a human. There seems to be a pretty wide range of what makes someone a cyborg, however; it can be anything from a few simple robotic implants to practically being a walking suit of armor. I like myself a good cyborg implant, too.

In the steampunk fairytale world Grace and I are creating, crossing human life with robotics is considered a sin. Therefore, while they have extremely advanced AI, creating an android that looked nearly human-like would be considered scandalous. And any human who receives a robotic implant of any kind is ostracized. Fun stuff.

As compared to one of my steampunk worlds, I have a steampunk android, completely mechanical, who essentially becomes completely sentient somehow.

You're welcome. As for the rest of your post, I would say those are fairly accurate descriptions, with some variance in android, some of whom do express emotion, and others who don't.

I would think an "android" would need to have at least human-like physical capabilities and appearance, even if it wasn't emotional, or else what makes it an android? Curiosity question.

Yeah, androids generally need to look human/humanoid to be an android. I think that might really be the only differentiator between them and robots.

Basically I would consider an "android" to be a highly advanced robot intended to mimic human capabilities in some way.

Data in Star Trek gets an emotion chip so he can have emotions. Otherwise, I have no idea.

That's a good definition for android, and I hadn't realized he had that chip.

Etymologically, an "android" ought to be something that looks like a man as opposed both to anything non-human and to a woman. But much like "anthropoid," which meant "like a human" but got applied so often and exclusively to "anthropoid apes" that most people tend to think it means "ape-like," the word "android" seems to have come to mean "robot," or a kind of "robot" that can interact with people (excluding "industrial robots"). Whether Star Wars is the proximate cause of this shift in meaning or merely a particularly obvious example, I don't know. (I see "android" as used nowadays as this general partly because something like R2-D2 is a 'droid.)

"Cyborg," to me, means some sort of life-form that is in some way combined with (generally augmented by) some kind of (not-in-the-least-simple) machine. In most innocuous form, this isn't even science fiction anymore: pacemakers arguably count, and more obviously I've read of animal tests of nerve-controlled prosthetic limbs in the last few years. (Though again Star Wars confuses matters with "C-3PO, Human-Cyborg Relations.")

So what would a highly intelligent, interactive computer interface count as? I'm thinking like Jarvis from Iron Man. There are many other sci-fi stories with a computer who talks and responds to commands in a deeply human fashion. These programs have the human-esque capabilities of an android, but they're just a computer--they don't have a body. What would they count as?

On the subject of Iron Man, who thinks the robots in Tony's lab are cool?

I'd call them "Artificial Intelligences" or "AIs".

That would work, but isn't AI more of a classification/characteristic? I mean, a lot of different types of robots possess AI. Is there a specific term for the "master computer butler" kind of AI?

It's an AI computer. Often has a name, like Jarvis or Cortana in Halo.

Robots (can) have AI; what you've described is an AI. But you can also call it an AI something-or-other, or "the AI of" whatever it's "inhabiting.""The AI of the ship," for example.)

Ah! I gotcha now. *learned something today* Thanks for clarifying that! *files away correct terminology*

A couple of types of robots we've left out:

Brainships/brainbots: Cyborg subclass. Human brain inside a machine, like Dr Who's Cybermen.

Nanomorph - Robots with a fluid [liquid metal] body form sustained by nanotechnology rather than a machine design. Think the T-1000 from Terminator 2

Nanite cloud - ala' Michael Crichton's Prey. I use them to simulate magical effects in Otherworld.

Biological robots - Essentially created biological simulacrums with programmed wetware. In my Otherworld series, they come in every form from simcats to dragons.