The guide asks about early forms of robots and autonomous technologies and how they developed. The clearest way to tell it is as one change: machines got better at sensing, and therefore moved closer to people.
From mechanical automata to systems deciding in the moment, told as a move out of the safety cage.
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| Era | What it could do | Where people had to be |
|---|---|---|
| Mechanical automata | Repeat a movement, with no sensing at all | Watching, as an audience |
| Industrial arms, 1960s on | Repeat a programmed path precisely | Outside the cage |
| Sensing robots | React to what they detect | Nearby, with care |
| Service robots | Work among people and adapt | In the same corridor |
| Autonomous systems | Choose actions continuously | On the same road, without being asked |
One change, told twice: “Better at sensing” and “closer to people” are the same development described from the machine's side and from ours.
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Everything up to service robots involved people who had chosen to be there: workers, patients, customers. An autonomous vehicle shares a road with people who were never asked.
Real-world examples you can name
Waymo driverless taxis — public service in Phoenix from 2020; San Francisco from 2023
Vehicles carrying passengers with no human driver, using lidar, radar and cameras within mapped service areas. Incidents blocking traffic and obstructing emergency vehicles have made the terms of city permission the live question.
Who it affected: Passengers, other road users, and taxi drivers whose work is at stake.
Boston Dynamics' Spot — commercial sale from 2020
A four-legged robot that walks over ground wheels cannot manage, used for inspecting construction sites, refineries and nuclear facilities. Police trials prompted objections strong enough that some forces returned it.
Who it affected: Inspection workers kept out of hazardous places, and communities uneasy about policing use.
The concept doing the work: Values and ethics. Consent is the difference. A factory worker agreed to work beside a robot. A pedestrian did not agree to share a junction with one.
Ideas that shaped robots
Science fiction
Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. (1920) gave us the word robot; Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics (1942) still frame debates on robot safety.
Working beside people
Robots moved from caged factory cells to hospitals, homes and pavements, where they must deal with people directly.
Cognitive robotics
Robots designed to learn, plan and reason about the world, not just follow fixed steps.
Consciousness and rights
Could a machine ever be aware, and would it then deserve rights? Saudi Arabia's 2017 "citizenship" for the robot Sophia showed how unsettled this is.
How this is tested — you have to describe how robots developed and then use it to argue about where they should be allowed. It comes up two ways:
Paper 1 — structured question
- Part a: identify an early form of robot
- Part c: evaluate deploying autonomous systems in public space
Paper 2 — source-based question
- Q2: explain a claim about how autonomous systems developed
- Q4: synthesise sources on their deployment
The trap: a timeline: Dates alone cap low. The argument is that sensing let machines leave the cage, and leaving the cage is what made them a social question.
Explain one reason why improvements in sensing changed where robots could be used.
Model answer plan
See the answer broken into clear points, with guidance on how each point earns marks.
Evaluate the deployment of autonomous vehicles on public roads.
Model answer plan
See the answer broken into clear points, with guidance on how each point earns marks.