A wide-angle look at the past, present, and promising future of cybernetics.Starting out with a superficial checklist designed to distinguish robots from "non-bots" ("Does it move?" "Is it automatic?") and a list of machines (readers must decide whether they are robots; answers are provided in the backmatter), Virr goes on to an equally quick gallery of automata from the ancient world to the 18th-century "Digesting Duck," then rushes headlong past modern robot construction and design, programming, common current or potential uses for work and for play, and finally prospective employment in near-future industry, medicine, and space exploration. Aside from a single glancing mention that robotic cars could cause taxi and delivery drivers to "lose work," he keeps the outlook of a robotic future rosy-blithely minimizing the danger of artificial intelligences taking over in a "technological singularity" and citing author Isaac Asimov's fictive three Laws of Robotics as if they were actually achievable. Still, in conjunction with a mix of stock photos and Russell's cartoon figures and cutaway views, he does offer younger readers basic understandings of how mechanical motion is generated, algorithmic programming, and present and future possibilities while keeping the tone light with jolly interjections ("Come on Sci-Fido, time for cyber-walkies!") and talking heads exchanging robot jokes throughout. Humans depicted are diverse.A broad, breezy once-over. (timeline, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 8-10)