The Robo movie began on 15 February 2008 in Chennai when portfolio photographer G. Venket Ram did a photo shoot with Rajinikanth.Following this initial shoot, Shankar and the cinematographer R. Rathnavelu went on a world tour to location-hunt. The team visited Vienna in Austria, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Hanoi in Vietnam to pick suitable locations. The first three photo sessions were held with Rajinikanth in Mumbai and Chennai with Aishwarya Rai featuring in the fourth session.
The first schedule of the film was started on 8 September 2008 at Peru, where a song picturization featuring Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai was shot under the choreography of Raju Sundaram and Claudia Bruckmann, at the historic site of the Machu Picchu. Other scenes for the song were finished off in the United States and then Brazil.The shooting for the second schedule, continued in Goa, India where the initial talkie portions were filmed for ten days. The third schedule for the film included shooting in Himachal Pradesh for a song, which was then followed by scenes being canned in and around Chennai.Scenes featuring a Robotics conference involving Rajnikanth, Aishwarya Rai, Santhanam and Karunas were carried out at SSN College of Engineering as well as at the Vellore Institute of Technology, with over four hundred students being used as extras.During the final day of filming on July 7, 2010, the cast and crew, including producer Hansraj Saxena, took part in a celebration party commemorating the completion of the two-year filming process.
The film's soundtrack, composed by A. R. Rahman, is slated for release on July 31, 2010. It will coincide with a promotional event to be held at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The soundtrack album's release rights were purchased by Think Music for Rs. 7 crores (US$1.6 million).