Ever since the Czech writer Karel Capek first coined the term "robot" in 1921, there has been an expectation that robots would some day deliver us from the drudgery of hard work. The word - from the Czech "robota", for hard labour and servitude - described intelligent machines used as slaves in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots).
Today, over one million household robots, and a further 1.1 million industrial robots, are operating worldwide. Robots are used to perform tasks that require great levels of precision or are simply repetitive and boring. Many also do jobs that are hazardous to people, such as exploring shipwrecks, helping out after disasters, studying other planets and defusing bombs or mines.
Agile robotic fish that look like the real thing are being developed to investigate threats such as rogue ships they could also act as realistic fishing lures
A robotic sub designed to explore the oceans thought to lie beneath the icy exterior of Jupiter's moon Europa will prove its mettle in an Antarctic lake
Two thousand years ago, a great engineer made a programmable machine - the control system is more like knitting than computing, but it shares aspects of modern programming languages
As if engaged in a dance, two mated satellites in the Orbital Express mission use a robot arm to draw apart, then come together soon they will perform more advanced moves
