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[MeepII]

How would I make animatable sliding joints?

[ENSONIQ5]

That's a bit too general to answer, it depends very much on your robot design.  You could build all the components as separate objects and keyframe their motion in Scene mode, using parent/child element relationships to ensure parts move together, or you could use morph targets, or you could use 'scissor bones' if building your robot as a figure. 

[MeepII]

I'm probably going to build it as a figure as the sliding joints are involved in the basic walking cycle.
The sliding action itself powers a rotary motion (the mvement of its claws).

[ENSONIQ5]

In the past I have used morphs to change the length of the inner part of a 'hydraulic cylinder', and added the hydraulic object as an element in a figure (eg. to bend a knee joint).  In this case only one end of the hydraulic can be 'fixed' to the skeleton, you will have to 'eyeball' the other end to it's mounting point as you define a sequence or keyframe in Scene mode.  Alternatively, the inner and outer parts of the hydraulic could be separate objects attached to separate bones, but you will still have to eyeball them together when sequencing, so the inner part appears to slide in/out of the cylinder.  Essentially, Anim8or skeletons can not have bones that change in length, they can only rotate relative to each other, so you'll have to cheat a bit.

[ADSohr]

You could make the arm or claw assembly its' own figure and then import it and parent it to the robot body.  Then you can slide it locally along the robot.  When the robot moves, the arm will still move along with it.