Automaton

An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot.

However, the word is more often used to describe non-electronic moving machines, especially those that have been made to resemble human or animal actions, such as the jacks on old public striking clocks, or the cuckoo and any other animated figures on a cuckoo clock.

There was "chess-playing automaton" which was in fact a famous hoax; the chess player was in fact operated from inside by a dwarf.

See:

• Finite state automaton
• Pushdown automaton