Robot Maid

A clean home just warms her... circuits.

Housekeeping is repetitious and unnecessary drudgery; as an engineer, it offended me.
For the problem to be within the scope of one engineer, almost all of Flexible Frank had to be standard parts and must not involve any new principles...
Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? Answer: any work a human being does around a house. He didn't have to play cards, make love, eat or sleep, but he did have to clean up after the card game, cook, make beds, and tend babies — at least he had to keep track of a baby's breathing and call someone if it changes.

— The Door into Summer

A maid 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 household chores. They cook, clean house and look after your dog with precision. Whether or not they look human, they almost always have sophisticated A.I. — 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 R.U.R., a Czech play written in the 1920s.

Sister Trope to Robot Athlete. Also compare Smart House and In the Future, We Still Have Roombas.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The title character of Azusa Will Help is a robot maid bought on the cheap to be a baseball player.
• The hIEs in Beatless can be used for this; one of the escaped new models even craves it.
• Dorothy in The Big O doubles as a Robot Maid because she has/had no other way to pay Roger Smith for his services.
• Minoru Kokubunji in Chobits has an entire staff full of Ridiculously Human Robots (well, ridiculously human computers) that serve as his maids.
• In the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex episode "¥€$," Android maids patrol inside the mansion of the millionaire Kanemoto Yokose. They also act as security, as they have weapons systems hidden inside their bodies, but this doesn't help them deter either Motoko and the Tachikoma or the assassin Fem. They continue to carry out their duties, completely unaware that their owner has long since passed away in his bed.
• Zero is a robot maid who serves the cute alien girls' invasion company in G-On Riders.
• The eponymous character from Hand Maid May.
• I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire!: Amagi is an Artificial Intelligence who serves as Liam's Parental Substitute, Sexbot, and prime minister all in one. The reason Amagi has all of those capabilities is due to the tendency of Feudal Future nobles to dump their domains on their children in Parental Abandonment while they move to the luxurious capital City Planet, and Liam’s parents let him pick so he chose the most expensive one. Amagi struggles with self-esteem issues due to the social stigma against A.I.
• Ruri from If Her Flag Breaks is a Robot Maid. She's also an example of Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids.
• Yui, an otaku's android maid from Indian Summer.
• There are cleaning robots all over the high school in K.
• Reversed in Kino's Journey, in which a family of robots is waited on by a human who believes herself to be a robot maid.
• Lapis Re:LiGHTs has α (Alpha) of the unit IV KLORE. She is a highly advanced, Magitek MagiDoll so advanced she's physically indistinguishable from a human and can consume food normally. Her personality, however, is incredibly stiff, professional, and painfully blunt at times, as you'd expect from someone who can only ever think in strict logic.
• Aiko from Magical Pokaan is not explicitly a maid, but she does wears a Meido dress and she's the one who cooks.
• The heroine of Mahoromatic is an android super soldier who chooses to spend her last year of remaining battery life as a maid so she can serve the son of her late commander.
• Mina from My Wife Has No Emotion can do housework, but being a model made for cooking, she only does cooking-related tasks. There's a "domestic plugin" available that would improve her ability with domestic tasks and turn off the perpetually looping advert for the plugin when she tries a non-cooking related task.
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, 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 Ninja Maid.
• This is the avatar for Ryuunosuke's Artificial Intelligence in The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, complete with a tail-like appendage ending with a USB plug.
• To Heart:
  • Multi [HMX-12] and Serio [HMX-13] are experimental humanoid maid robots from the anime.
  • HMX-17a Ilfa, HMX-17b Milfa and HMX-17c Shilfa are experimental maid robots from the To Heart 2 anime.
• Noel of Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever.
• The eponymous character of Useless Ponko, who's not much good at her supposed function, being a habitual bungler. Her current master's not fussed on that score, because he feels he doesn't need any housekeeping done; if he has to have a robot maid, he wants a useless one.

Audio Plays

• In Starboard the character Chauncy is a male example, a snarky robotic butler and chauffeur.

Comic Books

• A future-themed Batman story replaced Alfred Pennyworth with a robot.
• The Dandy used to have a story called Tin Lizzie, about a robot maid and a robot butler called Brassribs.
• Somewhat deconstructed in a Disney Comics story where 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. Unfortunately, said robots also consume a huge amount of power and the sheer demand causes the price of electricity to spike and all the robots to be returned, restoring the status quo.
• The Fantastic Four have a robot receptionist named Roberta. In the non-canonical Fin Fang Four stories, she's the girlfriend of shrunken-giant-robot Elektro. It's very cute.
• Anna, longtime caretaker of Gen¹³, is one of the "looks and acts perfectly human" variety.
• InvestiGators: C-ORB was built by Agent Monocle to navigate Agents around S.U.I.T. Headquarters (and to help the General Inspector remember his passwords.)
• Judge Dredd's robotic servant, Walter.
• Lord Blackpool from Lady Mechanika has a steam-powered robot butler.
• Last Man Standing has Bonnie as one of these.
• Irona, the robot maid of Richie Rich.
• Tom Strong had a steam powered robot butler whose speech came from wax cylinder recordings of his father: Pneuman, short for Pneumatic Man. He's actually a little bit older than the 100-year-old Tom. He was always bickering with Tom's intelligent monkey caddy Solomon, who serves a decidedly similar function.
• The X-Men had Nanny, who sported a maid outfit in most incarnations. She took her job too seriously.

Comic Strips

• In Madam & Eve, the Andersons try to replace Eve with a RoboMaid 2000. Things don't go as planned.

Fan Works

• Robojeeves the robot butler in Ducktalez 6. He even has the stereotype of having Jeeves in his name.
• Doris Sturm, one of Circe's maids in Zero Context: Taking Out the Trash, was transformed at some point into a lookalike of Pandora, complete with armor, staff and all the internal hardware she would need to live life and go about her business. Her existence as a living machine is briefly lampshaded by Claire when she sees her drinking some sparkling water.

Films — Live-Action

• French/Italian film Catherine and I is about a businessman whose macho attitude causes him problems with women. One day he buys a robot maid (the titular Catherine) and is so satisfied with her that he tells his wife, lover and (human) maid to get lost. Unfortunately Catherine starts to act jealous towards him...
• Kyoko from Ex Machina performs the housekeeping duties of a maid, and is in fact a robot.
• Robot and Frank starts off with Frank Weld, retired cat burglar, getting a robot maid... and he begins to teach it his old craft.
• Runaway (1984). Lois the 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.
• 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.

Literature

• Isaac Asimov's The Bicentennial Man: Andrew was purchased from US Robots to act as a valet and housekeeper for the Martin family household, including childcare. Even as the children grew up and left the home, he continued his tasks until grandchildren began to appear, at which point he asked to purchase his freedom.
• 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. Since golems are not used to having a gender identity of any description, Hilarity Ensues.
• "Flexible Frank", the non-humanoid housekeeping robot in Robert A. Heinlein's The Door into Summer.
• Hilda, a short story by J.B. Hickey. The robot maid's owner makes a living off seducing wealthy women. When an outraged husband appears brandishing a gun, his robot maid disarms him and throws both husband and wife outside the door. The owner then says that because they're broke he's going to have to hire the maidbot out again as labor. The maidbot responds with his own seduction routine, including the "squeeze me tight" line.
• House of Robots: Mr. Moppenshine is a robot butler who cleans they Hayes-Rodriguez household, and makes meals.
• In Christopher Anvil's Interstellar Patrol stories, the protagonists buy a space yacht from a salvage yard. It comes with a robot butler called Holcombe, who addresses the crew as "My lords".
• "Bismarck," in Robert Silverberg's short story "The Iron Chancellor," is a Robot Maid with a nasty twist.
• Reborn as a Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship!: During their stay in the resort planet Cierra III, Hiro learns about Maidroids, robotic maids that can be customized in multiple ways in appearance, personality and functions. He's tricked into building and ordering one, that he ends up naming Mei and joins his crew, later becoming the operator of their mothership.
• Rebuild World:
  • Gender-Inverted with the Neglectful Precursors robot butlers Akira encounters in one ruin. They politely ask for his identification before attacking him.
  • A Mauve Shirt hunter Rodin, driven by rumors he could get a Robot Buddy and his lust for Meido, activates a Lost Technology one of these, Olivia, who leaves him Impaled with Extreme Prejudice. Olivia Is a Consummate Professional contract worker for a MegaCorp and has a harsh Only in It for the Money mindset, working for the highest bidder before pulling a Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
  • Due to the Lion Steel corporation she works for having the theme of their servants being a Ninja Maid or Battle Butler, the leader of Chloe’s female bodyguards Pamela has a large number of Remote Body maid automatons she controls for battle. They all creepily share her facial expression, as shown when they each display Pamela's Slasher Smile while attacking.

Live-Action TV

• An episode of The Addams Family has the family buying a robot butler ("played" by famous Robby robot from Forbidden Planet) much to Lurch’s jealousy. Hilarity Ensues.
• Come Back Mrs. Noah. In "The Housing Problem", the crew are allocated their quarters which include a robot butler, but The Captain and his Number Two get the luxury quarters which have both a robot butler and a robot maid; the latter has a Supermodel Strut and a French Maid Outfit but can only think of one thing at a time. Like all the other technology on the station she doesn't work as well as she should; when told to "remove the top" of a tin of jam, the robot maid starts to remove her clothes instead.
• A robot butler arrives to the island in one episode of Gilligan's Island becoming very useful in the process and the key for their escape from the island, but sadly Gilligan causes the robot to malfunction.
• The Good Place has Janet, Artificial Intelligence who appears to be a human woman. She possesses all the knowledge in the universe, and can materialize any object— these powers to be intended to aid the humans in the Good Place.
• Anita in Humans. Though she wasn't always a maid...
• The Night Gallery episode "You Can't Get Help Like That Anymore" involves a couple buying and abusing a robot maid.
• The Outer Limits (1995):
  • "Mary 25" has a robot nanny bought to work in a household, just to be molested by the children's violent and abusive father. It doesn't end well...
  • In "Family Values", Jerry Miller obtains a robot from Gideon Robotics to do the work around the house that he is too busy to do.
• 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.)
• Vicky in Small Wonder is a little girl android made by the father of the family and she’s basically also the maid although they make her pass as their daughter. This come in play in an episode when they noisy neighbors where about to call Social Services when they find out they make her work in choirs all day.
• Whodunnit? (UK): In "Future Imperfect" (set in the year 2076), the family possesses a robot servant called Mister Seven who is reprogrammed to murder the head of the family.

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
• Hawkwind's Spirit of the Age, nominating the shortcomings of a different sort of robot maid:
  Your android replica is playing up again, it's no joke;
  When she comes she moans another's name -
  Is that the spirit of the age?
  

Radio

• Subverted with Tidy in Earthsearch, a cleaning android who is constantly complaining about how humans keep making a mess in the first place, driving the human protagonists to frustration. They can't afford to get rid of Tidy as (thanks to the intelligence and dexterity required for its job) Tidy makes a useful Do-Anything Robot (which Tidy isn't happy about either).
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) tells the cautionary tale of what happened on the planet Brontitall, where the human(oid) inhabitants realized they'd devolved too much power to robot servants, were almost nothing without them, and rebelled against the machines, rounding up all their servant robots so as to exile them to a penal planet where they would be kept gainfully employed knitting "continent toupees" for planets that had denuded all their rainforest. The sound-picture is painted of bewildered robots asking if they have failed in some way and not pleased their human masters, have they not Shared and Enjoyed, what can they do to put it right, as their captors whip them into line for exile.

Tabletop Games

• 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.
• DC Heroes has a maintenance robot called the Clyde that can perform mediocre housekeeping.
• Any Robot Girl in Maid RPG will be one due to the nature of the game. Robot Butlers are also possible.
• Paranoia: Alpha Complex is kept clean by an army of scrubots. Being quite common makes them a frequent target for player hijinx, or an easy encounter for GMs to throw at a party.
• Robot Maids are one of the many forms of robots available in Shadowrun.
• Top Secret: The "Dr. Yes" module in Dragon #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.
• Classic Traveller: Robots could have a Valet program that allowed them to act as maids. The adventure "Research Station Gamma" had maintenance (cleaning) robots.
• Warhammer 40,000 has servitors, while technically not robots, fulfill the same role. Like all other tropes, 40K takes this trope to a dark place. Most servitors are convicted criminals, vat grown, or individuals that are part of an institution that has deemed them no longer useful (through injuries, ethical shortcomings, or unable to meet basic requirements), and then large sections of the brain and often other parts of the body are replaced with cybernetics, erasing the individual and leaving a passive, compliant laborer incapable of using higher functions. The Imperium has these things everywhere, built for any conceivable purpose, since robots and simple AIs are in short supply since they're heavily regulated after humanity's historical experiences.

Theme Parks

• The former Horizons ride at Epcot had a robot butler that could be seen vacuuming the floors. Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom also features a robot butler in its post-show, as a tribute to the closed attraction.

Video Games

• The eponymous robot from Chibi-Robo! is a very, very tiny Robot Maid.
• The new Clockwork robots in City of Heroes are essentially this for the whole of Praetoria and can often seen vacuuming 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.
• In Detroit: Become Human, Android servants are evidently very commonplace and are somehow affordable for people who should otherwise be in poverty. Two of the protagonists start off as servants, with Kara serving a drug-addicted slob while Markus cares for an aging handicapped retiree.
• The "Mister Handy"-style robots in the Fallout franchise fill this role. You can even get one yourself when you get your own house in Fallout 3. He doesn't like you very much, but he's usually good at hiding it.
  • Fallout 3 introduces its militarized variant, the Mr. Gutsy. Complete with Drill Sergeant Nasty persona.
  • In Fallout 4, your Mister Handy Codsworth waited for you at your house for 210 years while you were having a nice nap in a nearby Vault. When you come back, the first thing he does is offer to cook you dinner. He can also become one of your followers.
  • The game also introduced the "Miss Nanny" class of robots, the Distaff Counterpart to the Mister Handies.
• GUNBare! Game Tengoku's fifth level boss is a giant mecha in the form of a cute robot maid.
• Roll in the Mega Man (Classic) games was designed to be one of these for Dr. Light.
• Li'l Miss Marshmallow in Mother 3 is Porky's Robot Maid, and an Optional 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".
• 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).
  • While we're on the subject of Shin Megami Tensei, Mary from Soul Hackers, who was built as Dr. Victor's assistant, complete with a maid outfit.
• In Pokémon X and Y, one of the "Maid" trainers you fight in the Battle Chateau speaks like one.
  Julia: "I WAS CREATED SOLELY TO DO BATTLE..."
• 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 Sims 3:
  • SimBots in the Ambissions expansion are essentially a more primitive version of the Servos, and can fill the same purposes.
  • Plumbots in Into the Future are instead a more advanced version. When first created they are incapable of doing much of anything, but with the appropriate trait chips installed they can act as a maid.
• In The Spectrum Retreat, all the staff in the Penrose Hotel are robos, up to and including the manager.
• In Stellaris, robots can be given the "Domestic Protocols" trait, allowing them to be employed as servants and granting a bonus to amenities generated by them.
• Francis in Super Paper Mario has MeowMaids, giant cat Robot Maids.
• The 3rd PC-98 Touhou Project game, Touhou Yumejikuu ~ Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream, gave Reimu a nuclear-powered robotic maid named Ruukoto.
  • The related Seihou games star the robot maid VIVIT. Well, advanced combat android Replacement Goldfish that works as a maid, anyway.
• Tesse from Waku Waku 7 is, well, a robot maid who serves her creator, "The Doctor".
• Poppi from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 fits this trope to a tee, having been programmed with a setting likely meant to pander towards Tora's maid fetish (He keeps a batch of maid costumes in his closet for when she awakened). The maid aspect becomes even more apparent when you unlock her other forms. She has an older "sister", Lila, who served as her prototype and fits the maid motif even more, while Arc Villain Bana used Lila's blueprints to create a Super-Deformed Humongous Mecha version of her known as Rosa (or as her creator puts it, GIGANTIC ARTIFICIAL BLADE RRRRRRRRRRRROSA).

Webcomics

• In addition to the canon Mega Man example of Roll, in Bob and George, her 'brothers' Proto Man, Mega Man, and X were all designed to be a cross between butler and maid.
• The Android Nannies, or 'Nandroids', in Emmy the Robot are developed as caretaker units for families.
• The furry comic O, Robot! starts with the purchase of a robot vixen maid whose owner names her "Robota" and initially uses her to clean the house and fetch cheetos, then his technophilic girlfriend starts tinkering with her.
• Some of the Chibi style AnthroPCs in Questionable Content are designed with limited housekeeping abilities.
• In Saffron And Sage, Cinnamon has a robot servant named Toast who is only capable of saying "Awoo". Despite this, Cinnamon can still understand her. Also, according to Cinnamon, Toast isn't a robot but actually a Golem.

Web Original

• KARA: "Hello. I am the third generation AX400 Android. I can look after your house, do the cooking, mind the kids..."
• As well as being a Sex Slave, The Nostalgia Chick's robot also dries dishes and makes coffee for her. He hates it.
• Ask Dr. Eldritch has Helen, the Doctor's "housekeeper". The Doctor insists that she's not a Sexbot — just ignore the fact that he openly sleeps with her.

Western Animation

• Cladestino has a robot butler named Sylicone in The Bluffers.
• Principal Scudworth has a Mr. Belvedere-like robot named Mr. Butlertron in Clone High. He refers to everyone as “Wesley”.
• In the DuckTales (1987) episode, "Metal Attraction", Gyro invents a robot duck maid named Robotica. Unfortunately she's way too emotional and gets a crush on Gizmoduck that reaches Yandere levels.
• Rosie from The Jetsons may not be the Ur-Example, but she's undeniably done a lot for the idea.
• Charles in Neo Yokio is Kaz's robot butler and accompanies him on many of his missions. Subverted in that Charles isn't actually a robot, but a mecha piloted by a small British woman.
• Robi from Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue!.

Real Life

• Real Life: The Roomba is a computerized, automated, programmable vacuum cleaner that cleans carpets all on its own. One can purchase costumes, including french maid costumes, to fit to such robots.
• MaSiRo Project has been in development since 2018. Here is the development video and here is a demonstration video of how it's supposed to work in a maid robot cafe.

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