I'm dead keen on robots, mechs, AI, androids and cyborgs. Perhaps I should clarify what's meant by these distinctions.
ROBOTS
Robots are artificial, mechanical, computer intelligences and thus a sub-set of AI (but not necessarily full Artificial Intelligences - see below), with a definite body that may or may not be human-ish in shape. There are literally thousands of examples I could include here - Robbie the Robot (top picture) and R2D2 being probably the two most famous examples, not to mention Wall-E, Johnny-5, all the Transformers (both Autobot and Decepticon), K-9 the robot dog... all these are robots, plain and simple. They're a staple of popular science fiction, ubiquitous and much beloved. The Jetsons had Rosie, Lost in Space had B-9 (above, more commonly referred to as just 'Robot'), Futurama has potty-mouthed, alcoholic Bender B. Rodriguez and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had Marvin the Paranoid Android. Disney's The Black Hole had space hick V.I.N.CENT, reliable old B.O.B. and the evil Maximillian. They come in all shapes, sizes, and temperaments, and I love them. I have plenty of favourites, but I plan to do individual posts later honouring my all-time great robot loves.
MECHS
Distinct from robots in having no intelligence of their own, they really are just machines, albeit a very particular and cool type of machine. Because they're not just can-openers, they're giant fighting machines. People drive or fly mechs, across the stars and into battle. My all-time favourite has to be Voltron here (the original lion version, not the awful vehicle version that came later) - five giant mechanized lions that combine to form a towering warrior-mech with a massive sword (more on Voltron later, there's SO much to say). I'm also very fond of the Zords from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, which do essentially the same thing but with less style and more camp value. Note: various distinct parts coming together to form a greater whole is not necessarily a feature of mechs, Devastator and other combiners from Transformers and the Mighty Orbots don't count as mechs, because the different parts each have an intelligence and don't require piloting. Gundam, on the other hand, does qualify as a mech, and doesn't consist of separate components that come together in a greater whole. A mech is basically a ship (or ships) that move about like a robot. More on that later.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES
By these I mean super computers that behave as if alive - Hal 9000 (above) from 2001: A Space Odyssey is perhaps the best known example, with Auto the Autopilot from Wall-E being a blatant rip-off/tribute to the original psychotic AI. Artificial intelligences do not necessarily have 'bodies' - they may be fully integrated into a vessel or station computer. Most ship computers like that of the Starship Enterprise and Mother from Alien don't quite count as AI, however, because they merely react and respond to the instructions of their crew and lack a sense of self and instinct for self-preservation. A true artificial intelligence has self-awareness, it has memory, an awareness of the passing of time and the ability to extrapolate and project into the future. It can think, plan and weigh alternatives, it will take initiative rather than merely react, will interact spontaneously with other life-forms and will seek to protect itself from deactivation. It's worth noting that many robots share these qualities and thus count as artificial intelligences, but that not all do, as many robots have only limited cognitive abilities and no sense of self or instinct for self-preservation.
ANDROIDS
A sub-set of AI, androids are very human-like in form and appearance but nonetheless completely artificial, as distinct from cyborgs or human-shaped robots. David, Cal, Bishop and Ash from the Alien and Prometheus films are androids, as are Data (seen here about to get freaky with Lt Yar) from Star Trek, Maria from Metropolis and David from the Stanley Kubrick/Steven Spielberg film AI. C3PO from Star Wars is not an android, being merely a vaguely human-shaped robot. An android is almost (ALMOST!) indistinguishable from an organic life-form in both appearance and behaviour. Androids are generally superior to robots in engineering and cognitive function, and inspire a mixture of fear and fascination in a way that ordinary robots do not. Where we humans have no difficulty consigning robots to second-class citizenry, we find the same treatment of androids troubling. If they are so very like us in form, intelligence and behaviour, what right have we to exploit, own or define them? Some of the very best science fiction has revolved around the ethical dilemmas androids confront us with.
CYBORGS
A cyborg is a fusion of machine and organism. Doctor Who has given us two of the most famous, the Daleks (squishy fascist tentacle-critters inside small personal tanks, above right) and the Cybermen (humans who've progressively swapped their organic bits for machine parts and turned Communist, above left). The writers of Star Trek The Next Generation took the Cyberman idea even further in creating Trek's uber-villains the Borg, an aggressive, hive-minded super-species bent on assimilating all sentient life with bonus body-horror. Inspector Gadget is another good example of a cyborg - he's still got many of his fleshy bits, but has been augmented with various mechanical appliances. Likewise Robocop. Note that merely having an artificial limb, eye, tooth or similar does not qualify someone as a cyborg - Luke Skywalker is not a cyborg, with his artificial hand, but his father Darth Vader is, with his almost entirely artificial body. It's only when the organic and synthetic are so fully integrated that the whole ceases to function when either is damaged or removed that one can be considered a cyborg. This disqualifies the Terminators - terrifying machine skeletons wearing a flesh disguise - the machine parts don't actually need the organic parts in order to function or survive, and the T-1000 series has exactly ZERO organic components. On the other hand, a regular human with an artificial heart DOES count as a cyborg, because she would die without it.
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As a side-note: in Fantasy such as Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, golems have some interesting parallels with robots - they generally have limited intelligence and are not particularly life-like, however this varies from story to story, franchise to franchise.
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