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.