A fruit fly's movements have been harnessed to steer a robot car as it whizzes between obstacles – the research may one day produce the 'brains' for flying robots
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.
Robot maids that wouldn't trample the kids underfoot have come a step closer with the development of a stretchy material that could work as a human-like skin
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
