Fondly Farenheit is a short story by Alfred Bester, already mentioned in this thread.
Well, there’s always Bubblegum Crisis, the sequel Bubblegum Crash, and the side stories in A.D. Police.
In Bubblegum Crisis, which takes place in the futuristic Mega-Tokyo around AD 2032, most of what you get to see of the robots - known as “Boomers” - is as thugs: either bodyguards for the bad guys, or as mechanical soldiers (like the BU-12B) run amuck. The more sophisticated boomers are almost human (or perhaps superhuman), and it is clear that at least one model was designed primarily to provide humans with intimate companionship (the type 33-S, AKA “Sexaroid”).
This is expanded upon greatly in Bubblegum Crash, where you get to see lots of boomers performing menial tasks such as coffee shop waitress (with a built-in coffee-maker, no less!), construction worker, and security guard. One episode, in fact, centers around a new type of Boomer (“Adama”) who is supposed to be more human than previous models… but I don’t want to spoil the plot.
The original A.D. Police series, based on a one-shot manga centered around one of the minor characters in Bubblegum Crisis, gives pretty much the same treatment as Bubblegum Crisis: Boomers are thugs that are largely a threat to be contained; although, in the episode “The Man Who Bites His Tongue,” we find sometimes that the solution may not be any better than the problem.
I’ve seen the movie and read the story. You’re using the word “based” pretty loosely.
City by Clifford D. Simak.
It’s been a long time since I read it, but I think the robots were servants to people and animals. I don’t remember if they wanted to be free or not. Anyone else remember this one?
My favorites stories along this line are by Anthony Boucher, from the early 1940s. In “Q.U.R.” [note the homage to R.U.R.] robots have taken over the work of humans so thoroughly that a crisis has hit because of massive robot failure. The reason for the failure: all the robots have been made in humanoid form no matter what their function and this has turned them neurotic! The sequel, “Robinc,” solves the problem by persuading the robots to take more comfortable functional forms. In other words, he back-forms the computer from humanoid robots!
The future sure was different back then.
God, I just read this one last year. I thought I was the only other person who’d heard of it, in recent decades.
WONDERFUL book!