May 3, 1983

The American Motors Corporation and China are close to signing an agreement to jointly produce Jeeps in Peking. The accord, which would be the first joint venture by an American auto maker in China, calls for the production of 40,000 vehicles a year for sale throughout the Far East. (Page A1.) A $2.05 million libel judgment against The Washington Post was thrown out by a Federal judge. U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Gasch, overturning a jury verdict returned last summer, ruled that the newspaper had not acted with malice in reporting that the president of Mobil Oil, William P. Tavoulareas, had used his influence and Mobil's money to ''set up his son'' in the shipping business. (A1.)

THE robots are coming. Nobody doubts it. And they raise important questions as they approach. How can they best serve mankind? What can they really do? Why are the Japanese so far ahead in robotics? Will robots be practical in the home? What are their drawbacks? But the answers often seem clouded in razzle-dazzle and the frivolities of science fiction. To glean some truths about the impending revolution in robotics, I set about building my own mechanical man. Heathkit has produced a much publicized $2,500 robot named Hero that anybody can buy ready-made to roll around the house. For $1,500, you can buy a kit and build Hero from scratch. All it takes is two weeks of hard work. The experience is a kind of crash course in robotics, a way of learning how androids are designed, and a way of replacing all that futuristic hoopla with a pragmatic awareness that only burning yourself with a soldering iron can drive home.

A Federal judge overturned a libel verdict against The Washington Post Company today and threw out a jury award of $2.05 million to William P. Tavoulareas, the president of the Mobil Oil Corporation. The judge, Oliver Gasch, said that there was no evidence in the record of the three-week trial that The Post had knowingly printed falsehoods or had published, with reckless disregard of the truth, an article about Mr. Tavoulareas that appeared Nov. 30, 1979. Judge Gasch presided over the trial in Federal District Court. The six-member jury found last July 30 that The Post had libeled Mr. Tavoulareas in the article, which asserted that he had used his influence and Mobil's money to ''set up his son,'' Peter Tavoulareas, in the shipping business.

At a recent Town Board meeting here, after the Democrats and Republicans had spent hours calling each other liars, after the youngest Democrat and oldest Republican had quarreled over where they should sit, after countless split votes, Carol Morrison, private citizen, stood up from the audience and leveled what might have been the angriest charge of the day against the Town Supervisor, Ronald Greenbaum. ''I don't think you understand how wells work,'' she said. Those are tough words in East Hampton, where most everyone takes pride in being an expert on land planning. A Picture-Book Community The Supervisor, a Republican, denied Mrs. Morrison's charge (entering into a long, spirited discussion on wells), but there is no denying that this affluent East End town, summer home for some of America's wealthiest citizens, has never been more politically divided. And no matter where an argument starts these days, it seems to end up over the same issue: planning. From the earliest days of the Ladies Village Improvement Society, planning has always been a grand passion in this picture-book community by the sea, and recent pressures concerning development have made everyone that much more excitable.

International For years, China's policies in Tibet were a lesson in how not to treat an ethnic minority. Peking forced an alien language, culture and even ideology on the Tibetans, and Chinese agricultural policies pushed thousands of Tibetans to the brink of starvation. Now Peking is trying to undo the damage. (Page A1, Col. 2.) American Motors Corporation expects to sign an accord with China later this week to jointly produce Jeep-type vehicles in Peking and export some of them to other nations in the Far East. (A1:1.)