Robot Maid

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
A clean home just warms her... circuits.

A maid who's made to order.

Not to be confused with Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids (though there is some crossover), the Robot Maid (or Robot Butler) is Exactly What It Says on the Tin—a robot, ridiculously human or not, whose primary functions lie in performing simple household tasks. They cook, clean house and look after your dog with precision. Whether or not they look human, they almost always have sophisticated AI—nobody bothers to ask why you're programming super-intelligent robots to do housework, but it's cool enough that it gets a pass. Of course, it could just be that being a maid is only said robot's day job—it might have a plethora of other, more crime-fighty functions.

Bonus points if they're young, female, and very, very sexy. Even more so if they actually wear the outfit.

Interestingly, the word "robot" in itself comes from a phrase meaning "someone who does manual labor," and was coined in a Czech play written in the 1920s.

Examples of Robot Maid include:


Anime and Manga

  • The heroine of Mahoromatic is an alien Super Soldier spending her last year of battery life as a Robot Maid.
  • Dorothy in The Big O doubles as a Robot Maid because she has/had no other way to pay Roger Smith for his services.
  • Multi [HMX-12] and Serio [HMX-13] are experimental humanoid maid robots from the To Heart anime.
    • HMX-17a Ilfa, HMX-17b Milfa and HMX-17c Shilfa are experimental maid robots from the To Heart 2 anime.
  • Yui, an otaku's android maid from Koharu Biyori.
  • Minoru Kokubunji in Chobits has an entire staff full of Ridiculously-Human Robots (well, ridiculously human computers) that serve as his maids.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, Evangeline has a group of Robot Girls around for the purpose of serving food and keeping her villa clean. The most prominent is Karakuri Chachamaru, who also serves as Eva's Battle Butler.
  • Aiko from Magical Pokaan is not explicitly a maid, but she does wears a Meido dress and she's the one who cooks.
  • Noel of Triangle Heart 3 ～sweet songs forever～.
  • Averted in Suzumiya Haruhi (marking the one SF trope that definitely does not appear in that franchise): the Time Traveler winds up on maid duty while the Robot Girl gets to relax.
  • Reversed in Kino's Journey where a family of robots is waited on by a human who believes herself to be a robot maid.
  • Zero is a robot maid who serves the cute alien girls' invasion company in G-On Riders.
  • The eponymous character from Hand Maid May.
  • Lilybot from Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal is a Litterbot, a robot designed for cleaning up trash. After malfunctioning, causing her to gain at least partial sentience and a female personality, Yuma "adopts" her and she works as his family's maid.

Comic Books

  • Irona, the robot maid of Richie Rich.
  • A future-themed Batman story replaced Alfred Pennyworth with a robot.
  • Tom Strong had a steam powered robot butler whose speech came from wax cylinder recordings of his father. Admittedly, Pneuman was rebuilt by Tom after his father died. He was always bickering with Tom's intelligent monkey caddy Solomon, who serves a decidedly similar function.
  • Somewhat Deconstructed in a Disney Comics story: Gyro Gearloose makes a fortune selling a series of robots, each tailored to a specific household chore (such as a gardening robot, a cleaning robot, a laundry robot, a cooking robot, etc). When he is asked why not a single Robot Maid, he replies that individual household chores require substantial specialization not possible with a generic robot and this approach has the added bonus of being able to accomplish several tasks at once. Naturally, since Status Quo Is God it has a serious catch: the robots' recharging process consumes an awful lot of power, causing not only bills to skyrocket, but the added power consumption to blackout the city, forcing the government to increase the price of electricity tenfold. Naturally, everyone returns the robots and gets refunded.
  • The X-Men had Nanny, who sported a maid outfit in most incarnations. She took her job too seriously.
  • Last Man Standing has Bonnie as one of these.
  • Lord Blackpool from Lady Mechanika has a steam-powered robot butler.
  • The Dandy used to have a story called Tin Lizzie, about a robot maid and a robot butler called Brassribs.


Film

  • At the end of Spaceballs, the spaceship Spaceball One transforms into Mega Maid, a giant robot maid with a vacuum cleaner to suck the planet Druidia's air through an opening in its force shield.
  • Runaway (1984). A robot maid looks after the protagonist's son, giving him a rundown on his eating habits and whether he's watching videos after bedtime.
  • Sleeper - domestic servant robots are a major business in 2173...rogue cryogenically unfrozen Woody Allen disguises himself as one to avoid capture.


Literature

  • Discworld golems are basically robots, so we naturally end up with a golem designated as a maid. Well, a secretary. A giant clay secretary in a blue gingham dress named Gladys. And since golems are not used to having a gender identity of any description, Hilarity Ensues.
  • "Flexible Frank", the non-humanoid housekeeping robot in Robert Heinlein's The Door Into Summer.
  • "Bismarck," in Robert Silverberg's short story "The Iron Chancellor," is a Robot Maid with a nasty twist.


Live Action TV

  • Kryten from Red Dwarf. (The fact that his mental abilities go far beyond the cleaning and catering duties for which he was built is sort-of noticed by the crew in series 8, but they put it down to a malfunction.)


Music

  • Jonathan Coulton's song "Todd the T1000" is about a guy who feels threatened by his robot butler.

"Todd the T1000 scares me
I don't think he knows I've got a right to exist
And he sits in my favorite chair and dares me
And when I look over he is making a fist"


Tabletop Games

  • Paranoia has scrubots.
  • Classic Traveller. Robots could have a Valet program that allowed them to act as maids. The adventure "Research Station Gamma" had maintenance (cleaning) robots.
  • Top Secret (TSR). The "Dr. Yes" module in Dragon magazine #48 had the Bernie, a hemispherical robot that could act as a vacuum cleaner, trash compactor, and stereo. It could also mop and wax the floor.
  • Any Robot Girl in Maid RPG will be one due to the nature of the game.
  • Big Eyes, Small Mouth has a "Robot Maid" template. It's got a number of upsides... but it also comes with the "Owned" disadvantage.
  • Champions adventure The Island of Dr. Destroyer. The title character's secret base has cleaning robots.
  • Robot Maids are one of the many forms of robots available in Shadowrun.
  • DC Heroes has a maintenance robot called the Clyde that can perform mediocre housekeeping.

Video Games

  • The titular robot from Chibi-Robo! is a very, very tiny Robot Maid.
  • Francis in Super Paper Mario has MeowMaids, giant cat Robot Maids.
  • Marshmallow in Mother 3 is Porky's Robot Maid, and a Bonus Boss.
    • After his accident on the Thunder Tower, Fassad (you may also know him as Yokuba) gets a robot translator, seeing as his mouth is stuffed with trumpets on his "reassembly".
  • (Classic) Roll in the Mega Man games was designed to be one of these for Dr Light.
  • Tesse from the fighting game Waku Waku 7 is, well, a robot maid who serves her creator, "the Doctor."
  • Mea from Popotan, a robot maid who also guards the other girls (Ai, Mai, & Mii) on their journey through Time.
  • The Sims 2: Open for Business allows talented Sims to creates Servos and imprint them with their personalities. An active Servo autonomously cleans, gardens, repairs broken household items and cooks, often desserts. Your Sims will get fat, and you may also get a craving for berry pie.
  • The 3rd PC-98 Touhou Project game, Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream, gave Reimu a nuclear-powered robotic maid named Ruukoto.
  • The new Clockwork robots in City of Heroes are essentially this for the whole of Praetoria and can often seen vaccuming parks and streets, or carrying heavy supplies for building. Of course, they are armed to the teeth should the pesky trouble maker try to pick a fight with them.
  • The "Mister Handy" style robots in Fallout 3 fill this role. You can even get one yourself when you get your own house. He doesn't like you very much, but he's usually good at hiding it.
  • When you present her the maid uniform to equip, Aigis of Persona 3 clearly states that it's the one she already wore before at the lab. In other words, the super-powerful battle android that she is also acted as an obedient maid servant before you found her (and can continue so even afterward).
  • Pokémon X and Y; Julia (a Battle Chateau trainer) seems to be one. She talks in a loud monotone voice, detects you as a threat, and activates her defense systems, saying she "WAS ONLY CREATED FOR BATTLE..."

Web Original


Western Animation


Real Life

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