android, automaton, gynoid, fembot

 

Actroid - by Gnsin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

An android is a humanoid robot or other artificial beings. Typically, they are made from a flesh-like material to resemble a real person. Though the word and idea come from science fiction in print and on screens, advances in robot technology now allow the design of functional and realistic humanoid robots.

The word "android" has been used to refer to robotic humanoids regardless of apparent gender, but the Greek prefix "andr-" refers to man in the masculine sense. The word has a long usage history.

• The OED has the earliest use (as "Androides") to Ephraim Chambers' 1728 Cyclopaedia, in reference to an automaton that St. Albertus Magnus allegedly created.
• The late 1700s: androides are elaborate mechanical devices resembling humans performing human activities which were displayed in exhibit halls.
• "android" appears in US patents as early as 1863 in reference to miniature human-like toy automatons which are machines that do human actions and may or may not resemble a human. The word "automaton" is the Latinization of the Ancient Greek αὐτόματον, automaton, (neuter) meaning "acting of one's own will." The word was first used by Homer to describe automatic door opening, or automatic movement of wheeled tripods
• A distinction between mechanical robots and fleshy androids was popularized by Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future stories (1940–1944).
• Karel Čapek's robots in the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1921) introduced the word robot to the world. But "robot" has come to primarily refer to mechanical devices which also may look like humans or animals but can also be just a humanlike arm or hand that performs a task, such as assembling a vehicle. "Robotess" is the oldest female-specific term and was used by Rossum, though it was not used widely beyond his play.

The term "droid" was popularized by George Lucas in the original Star Wars film. Though it is simply an abridgment of "android", it has been used by Lucas and others to mean any robot, including distinctly non-human form machines like R2-D2. 

Another shortening, "andy", appears in Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (adapted to the screen as Blade Runner) and was a pejorative term for an android.

Newest in this line of terms is "gynoid" which actually is anything that resembles or pertains to the female human form. The term gynoid was first used by Isaac Asimov in a 1979 editorial, as a theoretical female equivalent of the word android.

But other terms have been used for feminine robots exist. The portmanteau "fembot" (feminine robot) was popularized by the television series The Bionic Woman in 1976 and used in the Austin Powers films and others to suggest a sexualized gynoid. 

An unfortunate, though not unexpected, progression in gynoids in fiction and now in actuality are that they are "eroticized." Sensitivity sensors in their breasts and genitals to facilitate sexual response comes from male desires for custom-made passive women and is compared to life-size sex dolls. 

The HBO series Westworld is a very updated version of the 1973 film, written and directed by Michael Crichton, about adult guests visiting an interactive amusement park containing lifelike androids. The androids and gynoids in the extended TV series are used for far greater violent and sexual pleasures than the original film.