R.U.R., which stands for Rossum’s Universal Robots, is a 1920 science fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. The play begins in a factory that makes artificial people, called roboti or robots, from synthetic organic matter. Unlike the present conception of robots, they are living flesh and blood creatures rather than machinery, and are closer to the modern idea of clones. They seem happy to work for humans at first, but a robot rebellion leads to the extinction of the human race.