Robot Moves

When you say that someone is moving like a robot, you are trying to insult them - but you're also insulting robots. If you've never had the chance to build & program a robot (& I'll assume that's most people), you probably think of a robot as a "simple" thing - a machine that you just switch on so that it will perform its task.

Let's get realistic here - a robot is not a simple thing. It's a complex machine. For that matter, when we think of "simple" machines, how much do you know about how they work, or how to work them? Let's look at a few old classics - a spinning wheel & a steam engine.
These are both "simple" in their concept. I could get you to draw them, but not to draw one well enough for a Martian to build one.
For a spinning wheel, you pump your foot up & down & hold some wool while the wheel pulls it out into yarn ... simple! Have you tried to do it? Could you build one yourself?
What about a steam engine - it's just a matter of heating up water to create steam to make a piston rise & fall, right? How hard is that? Really?

It's usually not even the design of the machine that makes for efficient outcomes - a good yarn spinner is like an artist, creating perfectly usable balls of wool at break-neck speed. A good engine driver knows exactly what pressures are needed to run their engine smoothly - what temperatures, type of fuel, etc.

Yet we take such simple machines for granted & say that we, sophisticated humans that we are. can do amazing things with machine. No, WE don't - we know people who can do such things.

Robots are the same - just with more complexity. They have more moving parts, more capability, possibly a wider range of application. If I give you a robot, it's an oversized paperweight, because you don't have a clue how to even get it switched on. Forget SciFi movies, because the people who write scripts know as much as you do.

So, if a robot actually takes a lot of effort to get to do something useful - & can only do something if you put in a lot of effort, then calling someone a robot means that they must be putting in a lot of effort to achieve a task. It must mean that they are doing things very precisely - following a plan that has been critically designed to achieve a very specific goal (which is measurable), most likely with feedback to ensure that environmanetal impacts on the plan are dealt with in real time, or at least recognised.

Anything less than this is not a robot - it's nothing more than letting a child loose with a spinning wheel & expecting that they won't simply put their kingdom to sleep for a hundred years.

I think that if people really moved like robots - thoughtfully following a plan, with feedback loops to cope with micro-variations on their projected path to a desired & measurable outcome - then the world would probably be a better place.

It may take all of the random fun out of life, but at least you wouldn't have to keep dodging people who are staring at their mobile phones apparently with no idea of where they are or where they're going.