The robotics singularity

At least from a literary point of view, a kind of robotics singularity occurred several decades ago.  Plotting all mentions of robotics in the literature looks like this.

Use of the term "robotics" really takes off around 1977, and I think it's too much of a coincidence that this is the year when the first Star Wars film was released.  Broadly speaking, we can probably divide robotics into pre-Star Wars and post-Star Wars eras.

Pre-Star Wars robotics

Examining the pre-Star Wars era in greater detail we can see that not a great deal of movement occurs during the "golden age of sci-fi", and that a linear increase in usage begins in 1968 which gathers momentum throughout most of the 1970s until a hard takeoff occurs.  Probably the film 2001: A space odyssey might have something to do with this, combined with the moon-mania which accompanied the Apollo missions.

Post-singularity

The post-Star Wars era sees a dramatic increase in "robotics", peaking around 1986.  My guess is that by that time movie-goers had become utterly sick of Star Wars sequels, and were ready for fanciful diversions of an altogether different kind. Incidentally 1986 was also the year of the Challenger and Chernobyl disasters - both regarded as big technological failures at the time.

In spite of the progress made in actual robotics in recent times usage of the term has never recovered since the mid 1980s, and may even be declining slightly.  Even Google Trends appears to show flagging interest.  From a roboticist's point of view even really titanic events like successes in the Grand and Urban challenges did not a jot to pique the interest of authors.