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The trend is best seen at a plant in Fremont, Calif., operated by Tesla Motors Inc., a company founded by the huge comic book fan Elon Musk. The biggest robots are named after Marvel superheroes.

They are surrounded by Plexiglas, and they have nametags that include Wolverine, Professor X, Iceman and Beast. The labels fit the plant's Mojo. The factory, once co-owned by Toyota Motor Corp. and General Motors Co., now displays an "Evolution of Man" mural showing apes morphing into men and men morphing into Iron Man.

More than a dozen of Tesla's robots have names.

"They are superheroes--they do superhuman things," said Nick Tabak, who along with fellow engineers named the robots. "We named them after X-Men and that made them a little bit less intimidating and more part of the team."

At the Fremont plant, the huge robots lift the aluminum bodies of the Model S and transfer them over to a new line. Keeping with the theme, the company had a designer create a comic-book style diagram of what is happening at each station.

Tesla isn't alone and the phenomenon isn't unique to North America. Workers at Ford Motor Co., Honda Motor Co., General Motors, Nissan Motor Co. and Toyota all have pet names for the most revered robots in the plants.

At a corner in Nissan's Kyushu plant in southern Japan there are rows of yellow robots named after famous anime characters, welding and shooting out sparks as metal vehicle bodies pass through on their way to final assembly.

One is named Son Goku, another is called Vegeta. Those are characters from Japanese television's "Dragon Ball Z," an animated series that follows adventurers defending the world against evil.

Also working at Nissan are robots named Doraemon and Dorami from the show "Doraemon," a hit anime series with story lines dating back decades. One machine is tagged Luffy. He is the main character of "One Piece," a series about a young man whose body has the elastic properties of rubber.

Minsoo Kang, a University of Missouri-St. Louis humanities professor, says people are typically ambivalent about coexisting with machines, but naming robots could be a sign of kinship or comfort. "We don't name scissors, but when they start performing human-like actions, we do."

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