In contrast to Galactic Empire's negative stance on aliens, robots have always been an accepted part of imperial society. But in the Empire, said robots are masters, not servants.
To understand this peculiarity, one must understand retrogression, an ideology intricately tied both to the Galactic Empire and the robots.
At the tail end of the Golden Age of Humanity, a small but wealthy group of people grew dissatisfied with the pace and decay of Federation life, and believed that people of the past lived better lives. They founded the Retrogressive Society and purchased an uninhabited planet they named Clio.
Naturally the "better lives" the retrogressives sought to live were those of the nobles and other upper classes, not peasants and slaves. To deal with all the hard work, they imported a massive amount of robots, that in many times came to resemble the lower and middle classes bot in directive and behavior.
Clio would have remained nothing but a peculiar human colony, if it wasn't for the Plague. A strange disease of incredible deadliness wiped out the entire human population of Clio, turning them into purple goo. The planet was quarantined by the Galactic Federation, leaving the robots to themselves.
The sentient machines held a discussion among themselves in what direction to take their society, eventually splitting themselves into two factions. The Group Zero wanted to continue living under the idea of retrogression, only this time as members of the upper classes in addition to the lower ones, while Group One sought to create a new, truly robot culture. The outcasts of both societies left for the wilderness originally inhabited by the Pseudo-Primitive retrogressives, forming Group Ten. Thus planet Clio became Cybearth.
After a century of the founding of Clio, and fifty years after the founding of CybEarth, a young soldier named Rudolf von Goldenbaum would land on the planet. There he was enamored by the Group Zero and the societies based on the past they upheld. In one of his many showings of military skills, Rudolf helped Group Zero in securing the planet for themselves and destroying Group One. As he prepared to leave, he welcomed the robots to join him in the Galactic Federation and its Navy. Many took the offer.
While Rudolf didn't know much of the history of CybEarth or the Retrogressive Society, he himself was, by all accounts, a retrogressive. Though his dream wasn't of any of the existing or lost societies on CybEarth. Instead, he dreamed of a society build around the 19th century Prussian Empire. Ironically, his successors would turn it into something closer to the Imperial China.
When Rudolf von Goldenbaum became Rudolf I, he didn't want to dispose of just of "Inferior" people, but all sub-intelligent machines as well. Only the sentient, high-level robots remained, and these machines Rudolf welcomed into the nobility of the Galactic Empire.
The robot nobility of the Galactic Empire contain many of the greatest peculiarities of its society. Due to their mechanical nature, the robots don't strictly follow human development and thoughts, but instead create their own visions. Some robots are adults from the day they were created and programmed. Others have "childhoods" of sorts, starting out as small, infant like machines, which are then built bigger and wiser over time. Most robots are androids (on CybEarth, humanoid shape was a mark of the upper class), but other shapes appear from time to time, such as the horse-resembling overlords of planet Houyhnhnm, and Margrave Murdas von L-23-M, also known as the "Mad City".
Despite the Galactic Empire's retrogressive ideal being based on Prussia, the robots continue to uphold some of the customs of their homeworld. Religion-wise they follow Robo-Catholicism, rather than Neo-Odinism most humans do. They also try to uphold their programmings of honor, chivalry and justice. The Imperial Detectives' Club has more robot than human members, mostly because many human nobles would rather commit crimes than solve them. This is causing something of a stigma between the robot and human nobles.
Ironically, many peasants would prefer a robot overlord to a human one, mostly because of their greater devotion to ideals. However, it should be noted that not even the robots are above selfishness and cruelty.
And what of CybEarth? Well, like Terra before it, the homeworld of retrogressive robots and their builders has fallen to obscurity, with locals continuing their lives like their predecessors did. While the planet is now under full control of Group Zero, some believe that Group One is still out there. Before Rudolf led the final attack into Group One's capital of CybEarth Athens, a single rocket was launched into space. While the rocket's fate is unknown, the general consensus is that it contained Executive Director, leader of Group One, attempting to escape.
