What constitutes a robot by your definition? Is it any kind of mechanical actor, controlled by any computer?

@Schwabilismus Physically separate autonomous machines. A mars rover or probe would count as one robot no matter how many gizmos it has. The >1000 threshold implies we’re actually doing industry there, not just exploring.

@JonathanRayJonathanRay: just to be sure: "physically separate" and "autonomous" mean the same thing, right? They still can be steered by humans living in a habitat somewhere?

say you have humans using VR goggles to remotely control droids in the salt mines. I guess those count as robots even if they’re not fully autonomous.