are robots not a subset of automation?
I asked a roboticist to "define a robot" and he said "technically anything with a sensor and an actuator" so, like, a washing machine is a robot
Automation is just a major use case. Category error there. A robot is a kind of machine. Automation is a function.
The sensor/actuator definition is silly. A thermostat would qualify. Your friend sounds uninterested in the philosophy. It’s like dismissing AI as “any software”
“Sufficiently complex loosely biomorphic machine with a domain adapted universal computing capability” is a better definition. Feedback loops and computing element are necessary but not sufficient.
Which is fine. It’s a nebulous category. But to brush aside the definition problem is to lose sight of what’s interesting about the design direction and it’s tradeoffs. For eg, how to solve physical problems without shaping or specializing the environment to suit the machine.
A high-end CNC machine is vastly more complex than a low-end robot and will likely have more powerful compute and richer feedback loops. But needs a factory environment has no autonomy, and a narrow intelligence.
The biomorphic is a compact way of referencing a particular part of design space where you make minimal assumptions about the environment. But “loosely” since you needn’t imitate a particular organism. Just seek strategies inspired by biology.