Just call the Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm the Charlie Hustle of robotics.

The four-jointed human-size robotic arm was applauded last week at the third annual Carnegie Mellon University Robot Hall of Fame induction ceremony for revolutionizing the manufacturing of consumer electronics, just as baseball's Pete Rose similarly transformed base running.

The robotic arm -- SCARA for short -- has single-handedly caused the prices of most consumer electronic goods spilling out of Asian countries to plummet, making them affordable to the masses.

SCARA, which can build and fuse intricate details on circuit boards, was one of two real-world robots inducted into the hall. The other, which is decidedly less of a workhorse, was Sony's AIBO, the soccer-playing electronic puppy that makes SCARA seem like just another piece of machinery.

They were joined by three fictional robots that have inspired generations of artists, movie directors, scientists and engineering students into trying to build and portray the quintessential droid.

Perhaps the most famous of the three, Gort, arrived from the 1951 film "The Day the Earth Stood Still." The tin-can-resembling behemoth with a single blinking eye frightened Patricia Neal into muttering these untranslatable words as Gort clanked toward her: " Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!"

Gort was accompanied by the Art Deco Maria from the 1927 classic "Metropolis," a sultry robot that would seem more at home in a fashionable Manhattan apartment than a silent film, and David, from the 2001 film "Artificial Intelligence: AI."

"Science fiction has always inspired people to become scientists," said Jim Morris, the dean of CMU's Computer Science department at its West Coast campus in California. "Robots can be entertaining, but we must remember they are also made of real circuits."

While about 100,000 SCARAs continue to assemble iPods and other gadgets, the AIBO has been discontinued by Sony -- euthanized if you will. But the plastic, four-legged creatures have left an unforgettable mark on countless CMU students who have used them much as medical students use cadavers.

"Robots need three basic components: perception, cognition and action," said CMU Professor Manuela M. Veloso, who teaches an introductory robotics course that features the AIBO. "The AIBOs help deconstruct what robots are for the students -- instead of them being just zeros and ones."