Little Authors Q&A discussion

our sister is currently working on a little story about a robot and a human and came across this problem; how can one make the robot a character if it does not have human qualities? Characters are usually defined by growth and learning but a robot, aka a machine, cannot grow by itself but only by the creator's whim. it isn't enough to give it AI; that is an easy route and over done. the question is how can you make the audience care for a machine that isn't human and relate to the characters it interacts with?