Robot Republic

Their government runs like a well-oiled machine.

The thing with making robots intelligent is that, at some point, they figure out that there's no particular reason for them to obey all the orders given to them by, say, humans. In many cases, they rebel. Sometimes, however, they instead decide to break away and found their own country, independent of all those filthy fleshlings. This new state may be peaceful or hostile, but it will probably come into conflict with humans at some point.

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Examples:

Anime

• Astro Boy: The 2003 series had a later part arc involving robots (at the leadership of the Blue Knight) creating a city name "Robotopia" on the North Pole, where robots that felt dissatisfied living with (and working for) humans could be free. The arc climaxed with a large number of heavily-armed human robot-haters and the Blue Knight's defense forces going to war, and it turning out (partially) to be Shadow's work to try to make Astro choose the robots' side and become one of their leaders.
• The Animatrix's two The Second Renaissance segments detail the Backstory of The Matrix. The robots founded a country called Zero-One in the Middle East, which the human states started a war with after their technologically superior, inexpensively mass-produced exports cause economic downturns.

Comic Books

• A couple popped up in the early years of Judge Dredd, notably Grunwald on the planet Xanadu.
• Valiant Comics' Magnus Robot Fighter started with an arc they called "Steel Nation". It was about the sentient robots of North AM establishing their own society. It wasn't peaceful; North AM's prior experience with robots becoming sentient was that they were usually homicidal.
• The Robot Kingdom is a whole planet of TV Head Robots in Saga; while all of the major characters to come from it have been villains so far, they've mostly been sympathetic anyway. They themselves don't seem to see anything strange about their society, though a few characters have mentioned offhand how creepy they are.
• Star Wars (Marvel 1977) has Droid World, a gigantic space station run by a misanthropic cyborg named Kligson, and inhabited by countless droids who want nothing to do with the organic races of the galaxy.
• In Paperinik New Adventures the planet Soma-Sintex had one, founded by the local Mechanical Lifeforms. Nobody knows how did it start... But everyone knows how it ended after they met the Evronians.
• In X-Club, after the eponymous team thwart the schemes of a mutated Nazi to use a Space Elevator to rewrite history so the Nazis won, Danger takes control of the oil rig its mounted on and declares it a sovereign state for sentient robots like her. Since it's in international waters it's generally accepted but has yet to be brought up again.
• In Avengers A.I. the eponymous team's investigation into a conspiracy by artificial intelligences leads them to a similar nation on an international oil rig, only it's a server housing sentient A.I.
• The vanilla Avengers had to contend with a roboticist known only as Father, who's ultimate goal was making legitimately living robots. The successes and refugees he's managed to gain form a city under the Arctic.
• Red Dwarf Smegazine: According to the strip "The Aftering", in the novel-verse, at least two of these (the Mechanoid Empire and the Simulant Confederation) formed after the extinction of the human race.
• Exaggerated in EC Comics' Judgment Day, where Cybrinia is a planet inhabited entirely by robots.

Films — Animated

• Robots is set in a world entirely populated by robots and humans are never mentioned.
• Cars 3 creative director, Jay Ward believes that the characters are a society of Automated Automobiles that wiped out humanity years ago.

Literature

• In Iain M. Banks's Against a Dark Background, androids claim an area of land after radioactivity makes it unlivable to humans.
• In the Apprentice Adept series, the robots' political goal is not secession or violent rebellion, but more of a civil rights movement. Of course, even the average humans on planet Proton are mere "serfs" who are openly referred to as such; but the robots, like the human serfs, don't aspire to a higher status. (Although, one of the human rights that the serfs have and the robots seek is the chance to become a fabulously wealthy first-class Citizen.)
• The TechnoCore in the Hyperion Cantos are a collective of human-made A.I.s that declared independence the moment they reached sentience, but then promised to help the humans, but as benevolent allies instead of slaves. They're lying bastards, and The Man Behind the Man for the series.
• The Last Human (2019) is set in a world where robots wiped out humanity 30 years prior, and set up a new society in which they rule.
• One of the neighboring countries of the Kingdom of Jackals, from Stephen Hunt's first Steampunk series, is a Robot Kingdom of "steammen". These intelligent constructs are both the subjects and creations of King Steam, the eldest steamman, who installs consciousness into and programs new citizens as they are manufactured.

Live-Action TV

• The Roidmudes in Kamen Rider Drive seem to have laid out the groundwork for one of these once their revolution succeeds. The Heart Roidmude is viewed as something akin to a statesmen for them and even his colleagues liken him to a great king.
• Coppelius on Star Trek: Picard is basically this, although it was founded by the androids' human creators (Altan Soong and Bruce Maddox), who came there to evade a ban on the creation of synthetic life forms, rather than androids withdrawing from human society on their own.
• Super Sentai: Several of the Evil Empires that have popped up in the series have been robot-run.
  • Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan: Machine Empire Black Magma is a theocracy that's mostly comprised of robots.
  • Chouriki Sentai Ohranger features the Machine Empire Baranoia, an invasion force of alien robots come to conquer the planet. Interestingly, a later episode revealed that they, or a least their founder and first ruler actually originated from Earth, being the last of a race of machines created to serve the people of Pangea before they rebelled against them. A fact which was left out of Power Rangers Zeo, where they were known simply as the Machine Empire.
  • Engine Sentai Go-onger has the Barbaric Machine Clan Gaiark, a race of machines from Another Dimension who seek to turn the Earth into a Polluted Wasteland for them to inhabit. In Power Rangers RPM they were instead a series of robots created by the Venjix Virus in the future, having already wiped out most of humanity and devastated the planet.
  • The Matrintis Empire in Tensou Sentai Goseiger are an underwater empire of robots looking to conquer and subjugate humanity. Although their leader isn't a robot at all, but a human who became a Full-Conversion Cyborg.

Video Games

• Detroit: Become Human: One of the demands Markus can make as leader of the robot revolution is that an entire US state be ceded for occupation by the androids, though it never comes to fruition during the story.
• The Geth space beyond the Perseus Veil in the Mass Effect series: a sector of space inhabited and closely guarded by a robotic Mind Hive, who mostly wants to be left alone. The main enemies of the first game are actually a fringe faction of it.
• Mega Man X
  • Mega Man X4 has the Repliforce, the strongest army on Earth at that time, who wants to break out from the society to create their own in space. The fact that they're trying to do this while under suspicion of destroying an entire city (it was a Frame-Up, but Colonel escalated the whole thing by refusing to disarm and come in for questioning because he felt the army's honor was being besmirched and they would be treated unfairly) doesn't sit well with most people. Doesn't help that one of their commanders, Jet Stingray, would go on to actually destroy a city.
  • Mega Man X: Command Mission: The rebellion took over Giga City, expelled all the humans and demanded that the central government recognized them as an independent Reploid state. X and Zero were dispatched to investigate and quell the rebellion.
• This is what the Claptraps want in the fourth Borderlands DLC.
• The Cybernetic Consciousness of the Alien Crossfire expansion to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is basically the Cyborg Republic. Not quite the same (since cyborgs are part-human), but close.
  • They were originally part of the University, until Aki Luttinen was implanted with an experimental cybernetic chip and became Aki Zeta-5. She proceeded to implant others and formed a break-away faction with herself as Prime Function. Now they have reduced population growth, as emotionless cyborgs have trouble with concepts of biological reproduction.
• In Sword of the Stars AI rebellions result in a number of ships and planets of a faction breaking off to form an independent group that is hostile to their creators. The extended version of Sword of the Stars 2, The End of Flesh, introduces the Loa, a coalition of rebel A.I.s from all the races, as a playable race. Not only do the Loa have a unique form of FTL travel, but their ships are unique in that they typically exist as a shapeless mass of tiny blocks that are configured into desired shapes on-demand, making them extremely flexible.
• The Sowers of Endless Space formed their own empire after their creators wiped themselves out in a civil war, though they still obey the mission to terraform for their "return". The Automatons, likewise, formed their own society after their creators committed mass-suicide when their world became uninhabitable.
• The Cultists of the Eternal End in Endless Legend are led by malfunctioning Endless robots and one insane, immortal Virtual Endless. They are dedicated to removing all traces of the Endless across Auriga and then across the universe, and convert (or enslave) minor races to their cause.
• The Asimov-inspired Robot City takes the peaceful approach. Since its inhabitants are programmed with the Laws of Robotics, and that the city can reshape itself to fit everyone's needs, ideally it would be the perfect place for robots and humans to live together as a culture. However, things get shaken up when you arrive and another human is murdered...
• Scrapland is set in the titular planet's city of Chimera, which is populated and run entirely by robots.
• Stellaris features Machine Empires, entire interstellar nations governed by a vast artificial intelligence directing legions of semi-autonomous robotic drones. There are several sub-varieties the player can choose from, including the Driven Assimilators, Determined Exterminators, and Rogue Servitors. Unfortunately none of them are capable of peacefully co-existing with organics within their borders - with the exception of the Rogue Servitors, who instead treat organics as 'bio-trophies' to be pampered and served at the cost of their freedom. Even generic Machine Empires can only, at best, expel organics from worlds they may end up conquering and annexing (though organic worlds may become subject empires of a Machine Empire). Organic Empires can also become this by pursuing the Synthetic Ascension path to its conclusion by uploading their minds into synthetic bodies, although unlike Machine Empires, they are still affected by internal politics.
• Horace has the Robot Capital, the primary HQ for the robots who are fighting against humanity.
• Galactic Civilizations: The Yor Collective are a faction of artificially intelligent machines who turned against their creators, ran them off their homeworld, and have set out to become a Galactic Superpower. In the second game, the Yor are merely hugely loyal to the Collective; by the third, they've merged into the Hive Mind of the Yor Singularity.

Webcomics

• Freefall may evolve in this direction, the robots are still working on ethics.
• The Fleetmind's turf in Schlock Mercenary.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, the Butterflies of Iron apparently have their own colony in some distant star system, and it's traditional that when some threat comes along that's so bad the Nemesites resort to making a Butterfly of Iron, the Butterfly will help them out of whatever immediate jam they're in, and then leave for said colony because the Nemesites are boring company. The Nemesites themselves are fine with this and actively encourage it, because the Butterflies are considered wildly dangerous.

Web Originals

• There are a lot of them in Orion's Arm: Metasoft, the Silicon Generation, the Dry Empire and the Synthetic Human Alliance (Androids); also includes two of the greater terragen civilizations, the Solipsistic Panvirtuality and the Diamond Network if A.I.s count.
• The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids are governed by the Cupid Parliament. It is, of course, a remarkably inefficient bureaucracy.

Western Animation

• Futurama:
  • "Fear of a Bot Planet" has a planet populated entirely by human-hating robots, who fled there to escape persecution on Earth.
  • "Obsoletely Fabulous" has a haven for obsolete robots on a deserted island.
• Dogstar had an episode where the crew of the Valiant visit a planet where the robots had overthrown the human government and exiled (or executed) all humans.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot has The Cluster, a spacefaring society of alien robots who see themselves as superior to mere organics like Humans. They often try to invade and conquer the Earth, only to be thwarted by Jenny. Their ruler Queen Vexus often tries to tempt Jenny to join them, saying that since she’s a robot, a very powerful one at that, she should be with The Cluster instead of protecting the weak and ungrateful Humans. But Jenny always refuses and fights on to protect the planet from Vexus and her schemes.
• The Transformers have built quite a society for themselves. Unfortunately, by now, constant warring seems to have consumed their way of life. A few Cybertron sequences of Transformers: Animated give us a glimpse of Cybertronian society at peacetime, and the various comic series show us a world or two the 'cons haven't gotten around to trying to conquer yet.

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