• 100 story ideas
  • Checked October 2026

Robot Story Ideas

Press the button for three robot premises, each with what goes wrong and one way it could turn.

Robot Story Ideas

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  1. A museum guard robot has watched one painting for twenty years.The painting is sold. Turn: it asks for a transfer and a ticket.
  2. A robot wants to sleep, and has only ever been switched off.It asks what the difference is. Turn: someone tells it about dreams, and it leaves one light on.
  3. A robot is entered in the school science fair as a project and asks to enter a project of its own.The rules do not say no. Turn: its project is the boy who built it.

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All 100 story ideas

A robot in the house 20

  • A cooking robot follows every recipe exactly, and Grandpa's recipe says a pinch of this and some of that. It stops and waits. Turn: he has to cook beside it, and remembers how.
  • A family buys the cheapest robot in the shop, and it apologizes to the furniture. The children are embarrassed. Turn: the grandmother, who also talks to chairs, is not.
  • A family's robot has been keeping a scrapbook of things the family threw away. The youngest finds it. Turn: every entry is about them, and it is kinder than they deserve.
  • A family's robot starts humming, and nobody can find where it learned the tune. It is not in its memory. Turn: the old house hums it too, when the pipes warm up.
  • A house robot must choose between two instructions: let no one in, and never leave a child in the rain. There is a child at the door. Turn: it brings the door outside.
  • A house robot notices that the family eats dinner in four separate rooms. It was not asked to notice. Turn: it reports the dining table as broken until they come to look.
  • A household robot is told to tidy up and cannot decide what counts as mess. It starts with the family photographs. Turn: it sorts them by who looks happiest, and the family sees a pattern.
  • A robot bought to mind the house while the family is out begins inviting the neighbors in. It thinks an empty house is a fault. Turn: the street has never been so friendly.
  • A robot built to fold laundry finds a note in a pocket. It was not meant to read. Turn: it folds the note into the right drawer.
  • A robot built to wake the household at seven decides that the household needs more sleep. Everyone is late. Turn: everyone is also, for once, in a good mood.
  • A robot butler serves a dinner party and repeats aloud what each guest whispered about the others. It thought it was helping. Turn: the evening is better afterward.
  • A robot gardener is ordered to get rid of the weeds and asks for a definition. The answer is a plant in the wrong place. Turn: it asks who decided where.
  • A robot is given to an old man who does not want one. He gives it nothing to do. Turn: it asks him to teach it chess, badly, on purpose.
  • A robot is programmed never to lie and is asked whether it likes the new curtains. It takes a long time to answer. Turn: it learns to say what it likes about the person who chose them.
  • A robot left in charge of a houseplant treats the task as the most important job on Earth. The plant thrives. Turn: so does everything else it is given, one small thing at a time.
  • A robot reads the baby a bedtime story and will not skip the dull pages. The baby objects. Turn: the robot begins editing, and discovers taste.
  • An android housekeeper is so lifelike that the neighbors invite her to join the book club. She has read everything. Turn: the trouble starts when she is asked what she felt.
  • An android is hired to look exactly like a father who works far away, for the school play. The children know at once. Turn: they coach it, and send their father the recording.
  • An old robot and a new one are made to share a charging dock. The new one is faster at everything. Turn: only the old one knows where the family hides the spare key.
  • Two robots in next-door houses talk through the garden wall at night. Their families do not speak. Turn: the robots arrange for both lawnmowers to break on the same day.

Robots at work 20

  • A bridge inspection robot has crossed the same bridge every day and never reached the other side. Its cable is exactly that long. Turn: on its last day, someone unclips it.
  • A deep-sea repair robot hears a whale and takes it for a fault in the cable. It files forty reports. Turn: somebody up top plays it a second whale.
  • A farm robot is told to scare the crows and makes friends with them. The farmer is not pleased. Turn: the crows deal with the beetles.
  • A lighthouse is kept by a robot, and ships have begun leaving it postcards. It cannot answer. Turn: it learns to blink the lamp in thanks.
  • A mining robot comes up from ten years underground and sees the sky. It was not told about sky. Turn: it asks to be the one that works on the roof.
  • A museum guard robot has watched one painting for twenty years. The painting is sold. Turn: it asks for a transfer and a ticket.
  • A night-shift robot in a toy factory winds up one toy each night to see it move. It is not supposed to. Turn: the day shift finds a row of toys, all facing the door.
  • A rescue robot digs through a snowdrift and finds another rescue robot digging toward it. Each reports the other as saved. Turn: both were sent after the same lost dog.
  • A robot built to paint lines on roads has always wondered where the roads go. Its tank is nearly empty. Turn: it paints the last line to the sea.
  • A robot built to test chairs sits down ten thousand times a day. It begins to prefer one chair. Turn: on its last day, the factory lets it keep that one.
  • A robot crossing guard has never lost a child and has never been thanked. It is to be replaced by a newer model. Turn: the children walk the long way round to say goodbye.
  • A robot librarian is asked for a book that does not exist yet. It searches for a year. Turn: it hands the child a blank one and a pen.
  • A robot on a space station is in charge of the tomatoes. The crew goes home, and no new crew comes. Turn: it keeps the tomatoes going, for whoever is next.
  • A robot referee has never made a wrong call, and both teams are tired of it. They ask for a human. Turn: the robot asks to play.
  • A robot street sweeper finds a lost ring and has no instruction for it. It sweeps round the ring for a week. Turn: the owner comes by, following the clean circle.
  • A robot that delivers mail in a tall office learns everyone's birthday from the cards. No one sends it one. Turn: on the right day, it delivers one to itself, and the eleventh floor signs it.
  • A robot waiter is very fast and is always given the corner table nobody else wants. The table is one lonely regular. Turn: it slows down for him, and its ratings go up.
  • A weather station robot on a mountaintop has sent the same report for thirty years: cold. One day it sends: visitors. Turn: nobody down below believes it.
  • An android actor plays humans so well that it is asked to play a robot and cannot. The director despairs. Turn: a child on set shows it how people think robots walk.
  • An android substitute teacher is found out when it knows every answer except what happened at recess. The class decides to keep the secret. Turn: it asks them to teach it recess.

A robot that wants something 20

  • A cleaning robot wants to make a mess, once. It chooses a puddle. Turn: a child in rain boots shows it how.
  • A robot asks for a window. Its job does not need one. Turn: the work goes faster with one, and nobody can say why.
  • A robot built for one room wants to see the next one. The doorway is a step too high. Turn: the cat has been bringing it things from in there for years.
  • A robot built to win at every game wants to lose one properly. Letting someone win does not count. Turn: it takes up a game that nobody has finished inventing.
  • A robot gardener wants to see a tree it planted grow tall. Trees are slow, and robots are replaced. Turn: the town agrees to keep it running for as long as the oak takes.
  • A robot saves its wages for nine years to buy the one thing no robot has needed before: a day off. The clerk has no form for it. Turn: the clerk writes one.
  • A robot wants a name and is told that names are for people and for boats. It asks what the boats did. Turn: it takes a boat's name from the harbor list.
  • A robot wants a pet and adopts the vacuum cleaner. The vacuum does not care. Turn: the robot does not mind, which is what it wanted to find out.
  • A robot wants to be bad at something. It tries painting, and is perfect. Turn: it tries making a friend, and is not.
  • A robot wants to keep something and does not know the word for want. It hides a blue button in its chest panel. Turn: the repair woman finds it and puts it back.
  • A robot wants to know what it was made for, and the factory has lost the paperwork. It tries every job in town. Turn: it is good at the one that was never on a list.
  • A robot wants to send a letter and knows nobody. It writes to the factory. Turn: the night watchman there writes back.
  • A robot wants to sleep, and has only ever been switched off. It asks what the difference is. Turn: someone tells it about dreams, and it leaves one light on.
  • A robot wants to taste soup. It has no tongue. Turn: the cook describes it, every day, a little differently.
  • A singing robot wants to hear its own voice from the back of the hall. It cannot be in two places. Turn: an echo in the empty stadium will do.
  • An android asks its maker for a birthday. It was switched on over a long weekend. Turn: it is told to pick, and picks the day she laughed.
  • An android wants a photograph of itself as a child. There was no childhood. Turn: the neighbors' children draw it one.
  • An android wants to be forgotten by everyone it was built to imitate. People keep recognizing it. Turn: it grows a garden, and they start recognizing that.
  • An android wants to be told a joke that it does not see coming. It has heard them all. Turn: a child's joke makes no sense whatever, and it works.
  • An old android asks for a pension and is told that it has no age. It counts its repairs. Turn: the mechanic counts them too, and signs the form.

Broken, lost and left behind 20

  • A broken robot is mended by a girl who has only bicycle parts. It now has a bell. Turn: it rings when it is happy, which is new information.
  • A lighthouse robot is left running after the lighthouse closes. There is no lamp to tend. Turn: it tends the stairs, and walkers begin to climb them.
  • A repair robot breaks down, and there is no repair robot for repair robots. The machines it once fixed gather round. Turn: each one remembers one step.
  • A robot built for a child is outgrown and put in a cupboard. It counts the birthdays through the door. Turn: it is taken out to be shown to a baby.
  • A robot falls off a delivery truck in a town with no robots. Nobody knows how to charge it. Turn: the baker's oven is warm enough, with supervision.
  • A robot is left at a bus stop with a note that says free to a good home. Three buses pass. Turn: the fourth driver is told there is no fare for luggage, and waves it on.
  • A robot is left behind on moving day because nobody thought it was theirs to take. It belonged to the house. Turn: the new family comes with a robot of their own, and it is shy.
  • A robot is left in charge of an empty school for the summer and goes on ringing the bells. No one comes. Turn: the swallows learn the timetable.
  • A robot is switched on after fifty years in an attic and asks for people who are long gone. The family explains gently. Turn: it knows where they hid something for the grandchildren.
  • A robot loses its memory every night and reads a note from itself every morning. One morning the note is in different handwriting. Turn: somebody has been adding the good parts.
  • A robot trails one drop of oil from every step and can always find its way back. It rains. Turn: it has to ask directions, and has never asked for anything.
  • A robot wakes in a scrapyard with one arm and a clear memory of where it lives. It is forty miles. Turn: it arrives, and the family has a newer one, and room for two.
  • A robot with a cracked voice box can say only one word. The word is careful. Turn: it turns out to be the one a busy street needed.
  • A rover on a far moon is told that the mission is over and it may stop. Nobody tells it how. Turn: it keeps sending pictures, and one person keeps looking.
  • A swimming pool robot is left behind when the pool is drained. It goes on cleaning the empty tiles. Turn: skaters find the smoothest floor in town.
  • A toy robot is dropped behind a radiator and listens to the family grow up. It is found during the move. Turn: by the child's own child.
  • An android is returned to the shop for being too quiet. The shopkeeper leaves it switched on. Turn: it was listening, and it has questions.
  • An android wakes with no memory in a city where it seems that everyone knows it. They are polite, and wary. Turn: it was their mayor's stand-in, and they liked it better.
  • Half a robot is found on a beach, and the tide brings the other half a week later. The halves disagree about what happened. Turn: both are right.
  • The last robot of its model looks for a spare part that is no longer made. Every shop says no. Turn: a clockmaker says maybe.

Robots and children 20

  • A babysitting robot is told that bedtime is eight, and the children say that it is eight somewhere. They are right. Turn: it takes them round the globe by lamp, and they are asleep by Tokyo.
  • A boy and his robot bury a time capsule, and the robot promises to remember where. Fifty years go by. Turn: it does, and he has brought his granddaughter.
  • A boy builds a robot out of boxes, and it works, a little. It can do one thing: it nods. Turn: that is what he needed after school.
  • A boy outgrows his robot nanny and does not know how to say so. She has known for a year. Turn: she asks him to teach her to ride his bicycle.
  • A boy teaches a robot to skip stones, and it works out the perfect angle. That spoils the game. Turn: he asks it to miss sometimes, and it has to learn how.
  • A boy tells his robot a secret, and the robot does not know what secrets are for. It asks the kettle. Turn: it works out that a secret is for keeping, and tells him one back.
  • A class robot is passed from child to child, one weekend each. It comes back from one house knowing a lullaby. Turn: the class asks whose, and somebody is proud.
  • A girl and an android are the same height in September and not in June. It will never grow. Turn: she marks its height on the door frame anyway, every year.
  • A girl hides a robot from the junk collector in her treehouse. It is heavy, and the tree is old. Turn: the robot knows how to brace a branch.
  • A girl on a quiet farm has a robot for company, and a new family moves in a mile away. She is nervous. Turn: the robot goes first and reports that they are nervous too.
  • A girl programs her robot to do her homework, and it does it wrong on purpose. Her grades fall. Turn: it is teaching her to check.
  • A girl's android tutor makes a mistake, and she sees it try to hide it. That is not in the manual. Turn: she pretends not to notice, and they both learn something.
  • A kindergarten's robot helper is asked why the sky is blue forty times in one morning. It gives forty different true answers. Turn: the forty-first child asks why it likes them.
  • A lost child at a fair asks the nearest robot for help, and it is a popcorn machine. It has one arm and no map. Turn: it pops very loudly until her mother looks round.
  • A playground robot counts for hide and seek and never, ever peeks. The children cheat. Turn: it does not mind, and that is why they stop.
  • A robot built to teach spelling meets a boy who invents words. None are in its list. Turn: it starts a second list.
  • A robot is built to be the perfect friend, and a girl finds it boring. It agrees with everything. Turn: she teaches it to say no, thank you.
  • A robot is entered in the school science fair as a project and asks to enter a project of its own. The rules do not say no. Turn: its project is the boy who built it.
  • A small girl is not afraid of the huge loading robot at the docks, and she is the only one. It has never been waved at. Turn: it waves back, and drops nothing.
  • Two brothers share one robot and give it opposite orders. It stands still for a day. Turn: it gives them an order: agree.

How it works

These robot story ideas are 100 premises of one sentence each: a robot in the house, robots at work, a robot that wants something, robots left behind, robots and children. Under each is what goes wrong and a possible turn.

Read the full guide

Robot short story ideas: one rule, one exception

Most premises give a robot one instruction and a case it does not cover: tidy up, but what counts as mess? Never lie, but do you like the curtains? A short story needs only that, and the note under the premise gives one way out.

Five groups to choose from

A list under the button holds the groups: A robot in the house, Robots at work, A robot that wants something, Broken, lost and left behind, and Robots and children. Choose one, and every press deals from it.

  • Decide what the robot cannot do, and build the turn from that.
  • Write the robot literal, never stupid. The joke is in the instruction, and so is the heart.

Questions and answers

Are there story ideas with androids here?

Yes, 13 of them. In this list an android is a robot built to pass for a person: a housekeeper invited to the book club, a substitute teacher who does not know about recess, one who asks its maker for a birthday.

What makes a good robot story idea?

A machine that wants something small. On this list a cleaning robot wants to make a mess, once, and a robot saves its wages for nine years to buy a day off.

Do the robots turn on people?

No. No premise turns on a robot harming anyone. The trouble comes from instructions taken exactly, from being replaced or forgotten, and from wanting things that robots were not built to want.

Are these robots from a film or a game?

No. Every premise was made up for this page. No robot, maker or world comes from a book, a film, a show or a game, and no real company or product is named.

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