Well that's true. Given that Robo is obviously sentient and capable of emotions, we can certainly seem him being adaptable and able to develop new techniques and such on his own based on observations of his environment. In fact, that may be one reason why he seems like a special R-Y model, precisely because of this adaptative ability.
...of course I still don't see why he was sitting around Proto Dome...what was his original function there? Before the Day of Lavos, I mean.
According to brainwashed Atropos XR, Robo's function was to live among human beings to spy and study them for Mother Brain. But since we don't really know if Mother Brain has gone crazy after the Apocalypse or if she had been malicious even before, so we don't really know if that function as told by Atropos was true, false, or true but not malicious...