The film was developed by the staff of the Computer Graphics Lab in association with the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, New York. The name was inspired by the original meaning of the word "robot", derived from "robota" ("work"), a word found in many Slavic languages. It was originally intended to be approximately 90 minutes long although less than 10 minutes were known to be produced. A trailer of the film was screened at SIGGRAPH in 1982. The project also resulted in other groundbreaking computer animations such as "3DV", "Sunstone", "Inside a Quark" and some segments of the short film "The Magic Egg" from 1984.