Mechanical marvels: Intelligent robots are no longer the stuff of science fiction

Talon

For decades the staple of science-fiction films such as Robocop, gun-toting machines capable of firing at will are now terrifyingly close to science fact. Last year, South Korea revealed an autonomous robot guard equipped with a human tracking device and a machine gun, and the CIA has already used a flying robot called the Predator to launch a Hellfire missile at a truck full of suspected terror leaders. In Iraq, robo-recruits that can seek out and destroy improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are fast becoming a soldier's best friend in a country where roadside bombs have killed more than 1,300 US troops since the 2003 invasion. In the past four years, the American engineering firm Foster Miller has shipped more than 1,100 of its remote-control Talon robots to Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Department of Defense plans that by 2015 one-third of its fighting strength will be composed of robots. "It's only a matter of time before we see similar police robots moving to the civilian world," says Professor Noel Sharkey, a robotics expert at the University of Sheffield.

BEAR

Rescuing soldiers from the battlefield is hard to do without further endangering human life, which is why engineers are racing to develop machines that can navigate rough terrain to extract the injured. Leading the field is Vecna, a US company based in Maryland. The company's prototype Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (BEAR) is equipped with cushioned hydraulic arms that slide beneath a soldier, lifting them out of harm's way. Current prototypes work by remote control but Vecna hopes future models will have a degree of autonomy. Jonathan Klein, an engineer at Vecna, says the Bear could also have civilian uses. "It could rescue people trapped in mine collapses or under the rubble of buildings toppled by earthquakes." A version of the Bear could also make an appearance in hospitals, where lifting patients is one of the leading causes of serious injury among nurses. The company expects to see the Bear deployed by 2011, complete with its cute head. "I designed it myself," Klein says. "Robots without heads look grotesque and many that have them look somehow nefarious. We wanted something that isn't going to scare you half to death."

Robo-nurse

In some Japanese hospitals, robots are already circulating wards as guides or even drug dispensers. Soon, mechanised "angels" capable of cleaning floors, or even taking patients' temperatures, could be swarming around the wards of UK hospitals. Scientists from the universities of Warwick, Newcastle and Cardiff are taking part in the EU-funded "IWARD" project and hope to start testing robo-nurses in three years.

Project leader Thomas Schlegel, from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, says: "Our plan is not to make them do the work of highly qualified nurses, but to support staff by doing basic tasks such as dealing with spillages or general cleaning."

Using cameras and proximity sensors, they will eventually patrol hospitals autonomously, alerting their human colleagues if they spot a patient lying on the floor, or an unemptied bin.

The robots will also be linked to each other using Wi-Fi, creating a "swarm" of nurse-bots able to work as a team. If a call comes in to deal with a particular kind of spillage, the robot with the necessary attachments will take on the job.

Schlegel admits that "nobody wants to be treated by a robot," but says robo-nurses can provide an important bedside service. "Say you have a question for a cardiologist who is working in another hospital - robots in each place could link doctor and patient and allow them to have a conversation."

Roomba

Almost 50 years since Rosie the apron-clad robot first made dinner for the Jetsons, more and more of us are letting robots do the housework. The top-selling mechanised maid is the Roomba, a vacuum cleaner that uses bump detectors, dirt sensors and floor scanners to navigate your sitting room, sucking up dust and dog hair.

Developed by the iRobot Corporation, which also builds a range of mine-sweeping and reconnaissance robots for the US military, the latest Roomba has a scheduling function so it can run while you're at work or in bed. iRobot claims to have sold more than two million Roombas. The company also makes cleaners to tackle garages, workshops and swimming pools.

Professor Sharkey, who owns a Roomba, predicts that robots will soon play a much bigger role in the home. "You could say the home itself will become one big robot," he says. "You'll be able to communicate with it from different rooms and it will keep an eye on everything. When dinner's ready, a message will come up on your TV screen."

Robot Hand

With dozens of intertwined bones, muscles and tendons, and an almost limitless range of motion, the human hand is a huge robotics challenge. Early robo-hands were simple pincer affairs - but in a London workshop, engineers have spent two decades developing a mechanised hand so dextrous that it can handle eggs, pour cups of tea and change light bulbs. "It's the most advanced robot hand in the world," says Hugo Elias, an engineer at the Shadow Robot Company. "It's the only one that has all the joints humans have and a thumb as articulate as our own."

The key to the hand's agility is a bundle of 40 lightweight "air muscles" giving strong yet smooth control. When compressed air enters a rubber tube in each muscle, it expands, forcing a mesh sheath to contract. Even smarter are the sensors on the fingers. Made from a hi-tech rubber, they become conductive when squeezed. By measuring the current, the hand determines how much resistance an object is giving - be it a hammer or a strawberry - and uses appropriate force.

Elias says the hand could have a range of uses, from helping the disabled to bomb disposal. So far, Shadow Robot has sold hands to universities, and to Nasa. "They asked us to test it by getting it to operate one of the hooks astronauts use to tether themselves to spacecraft," Elias says. "They were pretty sure our hand couldn't open it, but it did it in seconds."

PaPeRo

Granny's out and the baby-sitter's double-booked. No problem - leave your kids with a childcare robot. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but the Japanese computer giant NEC has developed a robot that promises to be your eyes and ears while you go out.

Switch on PaPeRo - or Partner-type Personal Robot - and it will scoot around the house tracking the kids, identifying them using a camera in each eye and face-recognition technology. Ultrasonic sensors allow it to negotiate furniture and scattered toys while it entertains children using programmed movements and dances, as well as a 3,000-word vocabulary. To check up on the little ones, call PaPeRo. He'll beam live video footage to your mobile phone, and let you have a conversation with the kids via a network of microphones and speakers.

When you're at home, PaPeRo can connect to the internet wirelessly and alert you to new e-mails or respond to spoken requests for weather forecasts, recipes or football scores.

Similar robots are already being used in Japan to care for the elderly. One robot teddy bear asks its human companion questions, then, judging by the answer and response time, decides whether to call a nurse.

Asimo

When engineers at Honda began building robot-humanoids, their first prototype, EO, consisted of two ungainly legs that took 20 seconds to take a single, agonising step. More than 20 years later, Asimo, the latest robot to step out of Honda's labs, not only walks in fluid strides but can push a trolley, deliver a tray, climb and descend stairs, and run through a slalom course at up to four miles per hour.

Most recently seen on TV exploring a deserted science museum in an acclaimed Honda advert, Asimo is the most advanced humanoid robot in the world. "Any robot can walk in a straight line," says William De Braekeleer, Asimo's project leader, "but Asimo can predict its next movement and adjust its centre of gravity with anticipation to navigate any course. It really is the great achievement in humanoid robotics."

The company plans to employ the 4ft 3in robot as a receptionist at one of its research centres. "He will greet visitors, recognise them and guide them to the correct meeting room," says De Braekeleer. Asimo could also help Honda with making cars. "The technology is transferable," says De Braekeleer. "The recognition technology it uses could be used to develop systems that help cars avoid collisions."

Pleo

Remember the Tamagotchi, the hand-held digital "pet" that swept the world's playgrounds in the late 1990s? Well, things have moved on since schoolchildren rushed home to "feed" electronic keyrings. Pleo is an intelligent robot dinosaur that "hatches" out of its box and grows up in front of your eyes.

Its creator, Caleb Chung, who also co-invented the Furby, says his latest creation is more than a robot toy. "We've tried to make Pleo realistic enough that the technology becomes transparent, so you're just dealing with a relationship with a character," he says.

Pleo is programmed to learn how to interact with its owner via 38 touch, sound, light and tilt sensors hidden under its flexible skin. Fourteen motors allow it to move in fluid steps and exhibit a full range of "emotions". At first wary of human contact, stroke his head or teach him tricks and Pleo stretches out his neck and purrs; neglect him and he might stomp his foot and walk away whining.

Marketed as the world's first robot "capable of showing emotion," Pleo is modelled on a week-old Camarasaurus, a dinosaur that roamed North American and Europe in the late Jurassic period. "If you have a magic wand, why bring to life a cat or a dog?" asks Chung. "We wanted to do the impossible - to create something you can't have."

RS Media

As one of the world's leading robotics physicists, British-born Mark Tilden worked for the US Government's Los Alamos laboratory, for Nasa, and as a scientific adviser to President Clinton. Now he makes toys that fart.

"Robots are the last unfulfilled promise of the 20th century," says Tilden, who has faced accusations of "selling out" from some quarters of the robotics community. "The toy industry is a natural way to get them into the world where they can fuel people's imaginations."

And fuel them he has; in three years Tilden, who now heads up research and development for the Hong Kong toy maker, WowWee, has sold more than 20 million robots, from bi-pedal dinosaurs to remote control dragonflies.

But Tilden says his proudest achievement is RS Media, an all-singing and dancing 23-inch humanoid with multiple personalities. Equipped with touch, sight and sound sensors, the robot can interact with humans, track moving objects and even perform martial arts. "We use one in the office as an interactive mp3 player," says Tilden. "You can load it with music, which it plays out of speakers in its hands while dancing in rhythm."

The RS can also show photos and play videos on the screen mounted on its chest, and it has four interchangeable "personalities", including an English butler called Service Bot 3000. Users can also link the robot to a PC and create their own personalities and swap them online.

Tilden says the technology developed for toys like RS Media could be used to help care for the elderly, or assist the survivors of natural disasters. "We're trying to close the gap between fantasy and reality and make fun robots that are a launch pad to the serious robots people will need in the future," he says.

Geminoid

Last year, Dr Hiroshi Ishiguro, the director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Japan's Osaka University, revealed to an astonished group of reporters an android that was his spitting image. Seemingly relaxed in an office chair, Ishiguro's robotic twin, called Geminoid, was silent at first, but his blinking eyes and slowly fidgeting shoulders confirmed that he was no waxwork dummy. Then, scanning the room, the robot opened its mouth and used its master's voice to introduce itself in polite Japanese. Geminoid is in fact an incredibly sophisticated puppet. Sitting behind the scenes - or for an even more eerie effect, right next to his doppelganger - Ishiguro can remotely control the android using a motion-capture system that transmits his upper body and face movements to 46 air "muscles" concealed beneath his robot's latex skin. Dr Ishiguro insists the Geminoid is more than an expensive exercise in robotic vanity. He sees a future where people can teach or do business using robot proxies. "The idea is tele-interaction," he said at the launch. "If I can access the android online, I don't need to go to work anymore."