WITH reference to your feature "Robots Rise Up" (July 25), robot was first used by K Capek in Rossum's Universal Robots (1920) and the word "robot" in his coinage from a Slav root meaning "work". It portrays the fear that increasing automation and regimentation would dehumanise mankind and in the end the robots take over and wipe out humanity.

Another later science fiction story stood the idea that mankind is the pinnacle of creation upside down, by suggesting that the purpose of creation was the evolution of robots and that mankind was simply the penultimate stage.

Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, in the 1940s laid down the three laws of robotics:

u a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;

u a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law;

u a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.

Although belonging to fiction such laws would seem to be not only sensible, but should be mandatory.

Rev L S Rivett,

Ryecroft Avenue,

Woodthorpe, York.

Updated: 11:09 Wednesday, July 30, 2003