Robot Framework is an increasingly popular, open-source automation testing framework primarily used for robotic process automation (RPA). Robotic process automation tries to emulate human actions and interactions with software. Similar to REAL humans, robotic automation can understand (to an extent) what is on screen, press keys and buttons, navigate to links and extract data.

The Robot Framework is written in Python and OPERATING system agnostic. Most of the libraries in the ecosystem are also open-source. It has a modular architecture open for extension with other libraries. It defines the test data in files using a special syntax that’s specific to the framework. A test suite contains multiple such tests. 

When you start the execution of the tests, the Robot Framework parses the test data and uses the keywords PROVIDED by the libraries to INTERACT with the software. These libraries communicate with the software directly or indirectly using driver tools.

The Robot Framework runs the test from the command line. However, you can get detailed reports and logs in both XML and HTML formats. The framework has good support for STANDARD libraries out-of-box, e.g. ArchiveLibrary, Browser Library, DataDriver Library, HttpRequestLibrary (for Java), etc.