Allegories use animals with human attributes to teach moral lessons. Totems are animals which represent groups of humans. People have wanted to make artificial people for as long as recorded history. In ancient Egypt, priests stood in the hollow statue of a god and bellowed out the god's will. Disney World has lifelike machines acting out scenes from American history as well as other jackwork displays.
Every toy store has mechanical dolls.
The play is an ordinary sci-fi opus in which the mad scientist invents artificial people, lacking only souls, which he calls robots, to do the world's work. The robots rebel, but the good guys win. The play died but the word lived and is now the same in all languages. Science fiction also lived and there have been innumerable similar scripts for books and plays and movies. Even the ballet Copellia is about a robot girl with whom the living hero falls in love, and Pinocchio is a living wooden boy.