are robots alive?

The emerging science of correlation-based complexity sees life as a layered-hierarchy of subsystem-correlations, in our experience forged in free-energy flows at the surface of a star-illuminated planet. The key word when it comes to robots is "layered".

Even though they might look and act like organisms, they are either an instrument of the layered-hierarchy that created them or (if separate) a much-less-layered phenomenon by comparison. For example they do not have depth in their adaptation to the chemistry of this planetary environment. As a result, like us fragile multi-celled organisms they are likely to be gone long before microbes on this planet find it too inhospitable to stick around.

On the other hand, robots may be quite helpful in the extension of our life-phenomenon to other planets i.e. as an extension of our layered hierarchy of subsystem-correlations. In other words as an extension of us, robots may be an important part of life. Separately, even if they "look tough" they are a pretty shallow phenomenon by comparison.