We all know Data, as an android, is classed as an “artificial lifeform” and has sentient status. Torres also stated to the Automated Personnel Units in the DQ about how Federation utilise robots but aren’t as advanced as the Pralor or Cravic and that Data is unique, but would Startleet (or others) make use of humanoid robots for menial/dangerous tasks?
I think they would, yes. I think it would depend on the task as to what they would use, vs. holograms.
Man-shaped robots aka androids may have their uses, but it's quite possible that the Federation makes do without those. The principal reason for using androids would be to allow them to operate machinery interchangeably with humans - but if the idea is that humans shouldn't do work, then the machinery wouldn't need to be built to be compatible with humans in the first place. Instead of making an android use a broom, the Federation then would employ broom-shaped robots, or self-swiping sidewalks. Wherever Data goes, he's derided rather than worshipped. Cultures that don't know how to build machine men consider him an abomination; cultures that do consider him a fancy trinket, perhaps a sick joke at Noonien Soong's expense or something. If machine men were a regular phenomenon, Data probably would suffer somewhat different treatment, being initially mistaken for one of the stupid automatons, say. Androids may have been a phase the UFP went through in the early days: Kirk was somewhat impressed by certain alien ones (but not others) in the 2260s, while Harry Mudd made criminal use of machine men of unknown origin in the 2250s already, leaving nobody impressed. After this phase, some vaguely android robots such as the DOTs might see use, until they, too, would disappear in favor of the self-sweeping sidewalks and self-sealing stem bolts. Or then androids persist as a civilian phenomenon, and are considered something of an embarrassment by Starfleet - either in the sense of them being the equivalent of paisley-patterned camo gear or strawberry-flavored field rations, or in the sense of them being the equivalent of battery-powered sex toys. Timo Saloniemi
We more or less see this happen in Picard with the Synths, which have the look of Data, but apparently not the mind.
They did appear to have a fraction of his mind, which is what made them a threat in the eyes of the Romulan fanatics. But yes, it seems that if an army of man-shaped automatons is needed, creating it is fairly trivial. And conversely that androids as such are of little interest or worth since we don't see them applied in the usual case, despite this ease of creation. But they do make for darned good advertising for Positronic Brains (TM). Timo Saloniemi
well in Voyager teh federation used holograms, with some level of sentience, to mine dilithium and the above mentioned Picard reference
In the Kelvin Universe, we have robot police and robot... erm... guys who pulled Kirk's corpse out of the warp core.
Kirk had disasters with the two android episodes, WALGMO and I, Mudd where both wanted to supplant humans. Probably left a bad taste and distrust in Starfleet for the next 75 years.
Trek uses a lot of field manip’ so less robots. In Star Wars, you get the feeling tech is overripe and everywhere, so more hands on?
Is a hologram "sentient" or are the computers that create their programs the real sentience here? If it is the computers, then the hologram is only the program's display mechanism.
Robots can also be mere display mechanisms: Mudd's androids were nothing without Norman, say. But it's unlikely to be particularly clear-cut. A starship computer that pretends to be, say, 500 sentient people for the purposes of a holoprogram may become 500 independent lifeforms, or 500 different ways of expressing a single sentient lifeform, or 499 dumb projections that cheat in the Turing test and then one genuine sentience to impress the user. Drawing borders between these forms of expression may still be simpler than drawing borders between the lifeforms actually created within the computer - but this doesn't mean the borders wouldn't exist. Only parts of the vast monobloc computer might be sentient at any given moment, however you define those parts. And never mind that sentience isn't a Boolean thing, either. We're more sentient than our cats, or at least more of us are fully sentient than of cats. But within our own species, we certainly display variety, based on age and capabilities and moderated by injuries and the like. It wouldn't be particularly difficult to postulate forms of existence more sentient than the most sentient of us. Or to pack those within a computer of some sort, with appropriate display devices for our benefit and theirs. Timo Saloniemi
Not in science fiction, alas... Self-awareness also covers both in the context. And is at least as difficult to quantify as the above two concepts. Timo Saloniemi