> "Robot" is etymologically derived from a Slavic word for slave ("Rab" in Russian, apparently).
More immediately, it's Czech for 'worker': Karel Čapek, the person who coined the word as it's now used in English for his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), was Czech.
Karel Čapek: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_%C4%8Capek
R.U.R.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.