Elektro is a robot built by J.M. Barnett, Jack Weeks Sr., Harold Gorsuch, and other engineers at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation's Mansfield, Ohio, facility between 1937 and 1938.

A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed to evoke human form, but most robots are task-performing machines, designed with an emphasis on stark functionality, rather than expressive aesthetics.