Photos: 2007 Robot Hall of Fame inductees

Carnegie Mellon University announced its 2007 inductees into the Robot Hall of Fame on Tuesday at RoboBusiness 2007, the international robotics conference running this week in Boston.

For the first time, more actual robots were inducted than fictional ones. The only fictional robot honored this year is Lieutenant Commander Data, the robot played by Brent Spiner on the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Data was honored for the questions it constantly posed on both human nature and the rights of humanoid robots, said Matt Mason, the director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon who announced the inductees.