200 to 1919

The Cosmic Engine, a 10 m clock tower built by Su Song in Kaifeng, China in 1088, featured mechanical mannequins that chimed the hours, ringing gongs or bells among other devices. Al-Jazari (1136–1206), an Arab Muslim inventor during the Artuqid dynasty, designed and constructed a number of automatic machines, including kitchen appliances, musical automata powered by water, and the first programmable humanoid robot in 1206. Al-Jazari's robot was a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. His mechanism had a programmable drum machine with pegs (cams) that bump into little levers that operate the percussion. The drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns by moving the pegs to different locations.

The early 13th century artist-engineer Villard de Honnecourt also sketched plans for several automata. At the end of the thirteenth century, Robert II, Count of Artois built a pleasure garden at his castle at Hesdin that incorporated a number of robots, humanoid and animal

Automata also found their way into the imaginary worlds of medieval literature. For instance, the Middle Dutch tale Roman van Walewein ("The Romance of Walewein", early 13th century) describes mechanical birds and angels producing sound by means of systems of pipes.

One of the first recorded designs of a humanoid robot was made by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) in around 1495. Da Vinci's notebooks, rediscovered in the 1950s, contain detailed drawings of a mechanical knight in armour which was able to sit up, wave its arms and move its head and jaw. The design is likely to be based on his anatomical research recorded in the Vitruvian Man but it is not known whether he attempted to build the robot (see: Leonardo's robot). In 1533, Johannes Müller von Königsberg created an automaton eagle and fly made of iron; both could fly. John Dee is also famous for creating a wooden beetle, capable of flying. .

Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator in 1642 ; Pascal's calculator could add and subtract two numbers automatically; he was followed by Giovanni Poleni who built the second functional mechanical calculator in 1709, a calculating clock, which was made of wood and, once setup, which could multiply two numbers automatically. Around 1700, many automatons were built including ones capable of acting, drawing, flying, and playing music;

Some of the most famous works of the period were created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1737, including an automaton flute player, tambourine player, and his most famous work, "The Digesting Duck". Vaucanson's duck was powered by weights and was capable of imitating a real duck by flapping its wings (over 400 parts were in each of the wings alone), eat grain, digest it, and defecate by excreting matter stored in a hidden compartment.

John Kay invented his "flying shuttle" in 1733, and the "Spinning Jenny" was invented in 1764 by James Hargreaves, each radically increasing the speed of production in the weaving and spinning industries respectively. The Spinning Jenny is hand-powered and requires a skilled operator; Samuel Crompton's Spinning Mule first developed in 1779 is a fully automated power driven spinning machine capable of spinning hundreds of threads at once.

Richard Arkwright built a water powered weaving machine, and factory around it in 1781, starting the Industrial Revolution.

The Japanese craftsman Hisashige Tanaka, known as "Japan's Edison", created an array of extremely complex mechanical toys, some of which were capable of serving tea, firing arrows drawn from a quiver, or even painting a Japanese kanji character. The landmark text Karakuri Zui (Illustrated Machinery) was published in 1796.

By 1800, cloth production was completely automated. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution the idea of automata began to be applied to industry, as cost and time saving devices.

Improvements in the weaving industry had led to large amounts of automation, and the idea of programmable machines became popular with Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine Babbage conceived his Analytical Engine as a replacement for his uncompleted Difference Engine; this larger, more complex device would be able to perform multiple operations, and would be operated by punch cards. Construction of the Analytical Engine was never completed; work was begun in 1833. However, Ada Lovelace's work on the project has resulted in her being credited as the first computer programmer.

In literature, around this time period, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, about a monster consisting of dead flesh being brought to life by electricity.

In 1837, the story of the Golem of Prague, a humanoid artificial intelligence activated by inscribing Hebrew letters on its forehead, based on George Boole invented a new type of symbolic logic in 1847 which was instrumental to the creation of computers and robots.

In 1898 Nikola Tesla publicly demonstrated a radio-controlled (teleoperated) boat, similar to a modern ROV. Based on his patents, and  for "teleautomation", Tesla hoped to develop the wireless torpedo into a weapon system for the US Navy (Cheney 1989).