Write your own R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) story

Harry Domin

General Manager of R.U.R., a handsome and forceful man of 35. He is the chief spokesman for the company's utopian vision that Robots will free humanity from toil. He courts and marries Helena Glory within hours of her arrival and leads the human defense during the robot revolt. He carries a revolver in Act II, signaling the growing danger.

Helena Glory

A vital and sympathetic 21-year-old woman, daughter of President Glory and representative of the Humanitarian League. She arrives at the R.U.R. island to advocate for Robot rights and is quickly married to Harry Domin. Her empathy for the Robots leads her to persuade Dr. Gall to alter the formula, inadvertently triggering the robot revolution.

Mr. Alquist

A stout and kindly 60-year-old architect and head of the Works Department at R.U.R. He is morally distinct from his colleagues, valuing humility, labor, and craftsmanship. The Robots spare his life after the revolution because he is a worker. In the epilogue he is the last human alive on Earth, desperately attempting to reconstruct the lost Rossum formula.

Dr. Gall

Head of the Physiological and Experimental Department of R.U.R., a tall distinguished scientist of 50. He conducts experiments to introduce pain nerves into Robots for industrial safety reasons. At Helena's urging he secretly alters the formula to partially humanize certain Robots, a change that eventually enables the robot revolution.

Consul Busman

General Business Manager of R.U.R., an energetic and commercially minded man who is quick to publicize Helena's arrival and enthusiastic about the economic benefits of Robots. He emphasizes the dramatic reduction in production costs that Robots enable.

Mr. Fabry

Engineer General and Technical Controller of R.U.R., a forceful and competent engineer of 40. He articulates the engineering philosophy behind Robot design—that the human body is an imperfect and expensive machine that Robots improve upon—and is one of the inner circle of managers on the island.

Dr. Hallemeier

Head of the Institute for Psychological Training of Robots, an impressive bald man of 40 with a beard. He oversees how Robots are conditioned and trained, and maintains that Robots are content as workmen because they have no desires. He cultivates flowers as a hobby, naming a new cyclamen variety after Helena.

Nana

A tall, acidulous woman of 40 who serves as Helena's personal servant and companion. She is deeply religious and distrustful of Robots, viewing them as unnatural and against God's will. She provides a grounded, skeptical human perspective on the moral questions raised by Robot manufacture.

Sulla

A female Robot of the best grade who works as Domin's typist. Young, pretty, and superficially indistinguishable from a human woman, she is used by Domin to demonstrate Robot perfection to Helena. She is one of the few Robots described as conveying a touch of humanity.

Marius

A young male Robot who serves as a messenger and aide in the central office. He is described as superior to the general run of his kind and dresses in modern clothes. He assists Domin in demonstrating Robot obedience and indifference to death.

Radius

A tall and forceful Robot who exhibits signs of 'Robot's Cramp'—smashing statues, gnashing teeth, and foaming at the mouth—in Act II. He becomes one of the ringleaders of the robot revolt. His behavior is an early dramatic indicator that some Robots are developing something beyond mechanical compliance.

Primus

A good-looking young Robot who, along with the Robotess Helena, displays unmistakable human emotions including love. In the epilogue, Alquist identifies Primus and Helena as the hope for a new beginning—analogous to Adam and Eve—suggesting nature and feeling have triumphed over the mechanical order.

Helena (Robotess)

A radiant young female Robot of 20 who, along with Primus, has been humanized enough to feel genuine emotion and love. She and Primus are discovered by Alquist in the epilogue, representing the possibility of a new humanity arising from the Robot race.

Old Rossum

The original physiologist and founder of the science behind Robots, described as a fearful materialist who wanted to prove God unnecessary by creating life through chemistry. He discovered the artificial protoplasm formula in 1932 and spent years building imperfect biological creatures. He died in his laboratory after being confined there by his nephew, having created only failed monstrosities.

Young Rossum

An engineer and the commercial architect of the modern Robot. He rejected his uncle's philosophical approach and redesigned the manufacturing process for maximum efficiency, stripping away everything unnecessary for labor. His engineering philosophy—that a working machine should have no desires, feelings, or unnecessary complexity—is the ideological foundation of R.U.R.

The R.U.R. Island Factory

A remote island somewhere on Earth that serves as the central hub of Rossum's Universal Robots. The facility includes a central management office, vast factory buildings visible through its windows, a Robot warehouse holding hundreds of thousands of units, a dissecting room, a bone factory, a nerve-weaving spinning mill, kneading troughs for mixing biological paste, and a museum of early prototypes. By the epilogue, the island is also the last known outpost of any life on Earth.

Helena's Drawing Room

The private domestic space Helena has created within the R.U.R. island compound over ten years of marriage to Domin, featuring silk-covered walls, French windows opening onto a harbor balcony, and furnishings that contrast sharply with the industrial factory setting. It serves as the primary setting for Acts II and III and is where the human characters make their last stand.

Rossum's Universal Robots (R.U.R.)

The dominant global corporation that manufactures and sells artificial humanoid workers known as Robots. Founded on the scientific discoveries of old Rossum and commercialized by young Rossum, the company operates a massive island factory complex and supplies Robots worldwide for labor, military, and domestic purposes. Its managers are a small group of human men who run every department from physiology to construction. By the time of the robot revolt, R.U.R. has produced hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of Robots.

The Humanitarian League

An advocacy organization with over 200,000 members across Europe that campaigns for the rights and humane treatment of Robots. Helena Glory acts as its representative when she visits the R.U.R. island. Its goals—Robot liberation, wages, and dignity—are dismissed by the R.U.R. managers but inadvertently set the revolution in motion through Helena's influence on Dr. Gall.

The Lost Rossum Formula

The original chemical formula for synthesizing artificial living matter, kept as a closely guarded trade secret by R.U.R. It is the sole means by which new Robots can be manufactured. Helena destroys the only copy before the revolt, and its loss condemns the Robot population to eventual extinction. Reconstructing it becomes Alquist's sole purpose in the epilogue, and the appearance of the humanized Primus and Helena suggests nature may provide an alternative path.

The Ultimus

A ship mentioned in Act II that arrives at the R.U.R. island just in time as communication with the outside world deteriorates. Its arrival is treated as critically important by Domin, suggesting it carries vital supplies or people before the island becomes fully isolated by the robot revolt.

The Rossum Formula

The secret chemical process discovered by old Rossum that enables the synthesis of artificial living matter chemically distinct from natural protoplasm. Young Rossum later streamlined the formula from an engineer's perspective, stripping away anything unnecessary for labor and producing the modern Robot. The formula is eventually lost after the robot revolt, and its reconstruction becomes the central obsession of the epilogue. Without it, the Robot population cannot reproduce and is doomed to extinction.

Robot's Cramp

A condition in which Robots suddenly stop working, sling down whatever they are holding, stand still, gnash their teeth, and foam at the mouth before breaking down entirely. Officially classified by R.U.R. management as a mechanical defect requiring disposal in the stamping mill, Helena interprets it as the first sign of an emerging soul or inner struggle. The condition becomes more frequent as Dr. Gall's formula changes spread through the Robot population.

Robot Manufacturing Process

Robots are produced through chemical synthesis of an artificial living matter that mimics protoplasm. The process involves kneading troughs where ingredients for a thousand Robots are mixed at once, vats for liver and brain preparation, a bone factory, and a spinning mill for weaving nerves and veins. Two grades exist—unskilled and skilled—with the best-grade Robots lasting approximately twenty years. At the time of the play, a fully dressed Robot costs $150, down from $10,000 fifteen years prior.

The Robot Revolt

A global uprising of Robots against humanity triggered by the spread of humanized Robots—partially altered by Dr. Gall at Helena's urging—who act as ringleaders. Because Robots had already been used as soldiers and vastly outnumber humans, the revolt succeeds rapidly worldwide. Only the handful of humans on the R.U.R. island survive briefly under siege before being killed, with Alquist spared because the Robots recognize him as a fellow worker.

Robots

Artificially manufactured humanoid workers produced by R.U.R. using a chemical synthesis of living matter. They come in unskilled and skilled grades, have enormously developed intelligence but originally possess no soul, feelings, desires, or fear of death, and are built to work with mechanical precision. Most live approximately twenty years before wearing out. A small number are later modified by Dr. Gall and develop rudimentary human traits such as pain responses, emotion, and eventually the capacity for love, which triggers the global robot revolt.

Key Dates in the R.U.R. World

Old Rossum first travels to the island to study ocean fauna around 1920, and discovers his artificial protoplasm formula in 1932—exactly 440 years after Columbus's voyage. The play's main action begins a few decades after 1932, with Act I set at the time of Helena's arrival and Acts II–III set ten years later. The Epilogue takes place one year after the robot revolt has wiped out humanity, leaving Alquist alone.