What these means is that the word robot carries within it more than simply an allusion to work, drudgery or slavery (although it is for mere drudgery that Rossum’s ‘roboti’ are originally made); it carries within it, in nascent semiotic form, the larger narrative of the play: serfdom on the road to liberation. Even in the early stages of the drama, Čapek’s robots are never mere automata.
