Ian Sample

It's felt like for decades that robots have really not progressed beyond this sort of, you know, almost like your dustbin on wheels type robot, you know, your very basic type robot.

And it seemed like robotics certainly hasn't had its chat GPT moment where suddenly you get a total inflection and the technology is suddenly dramatically more effective and more

you know, finds more markets.

I'm interested in the kinds of robots that China is actually focusing on building.

I mean, are they going for a particular style of robot or are they looking to put robots into particular roles that are ones that they haven't been doing before?

Amy, these companies have clearly got challenges on their hands with these robots.

I mean, how are they trying to tackle, for example, this issue of a robot having to navigate a space that it's completely new to, it hasn't been in before?

Robots are making massive strides, but what will it take to get them from running and dancing to washing our dishes and fixing our sinks?

According to many roboticists, it comes down to just one thing.

Nathan Lepore is Professor of Robotics and AI at the University of Bristol.

And his focus is exactly what many of these companies are grappling with.

How to give robots what he calls human-like dexterity.

He told me where the field has got to so far.

Nathan, talk me through what...

difficult about getting a robot to do what our hands can do.

I mean, you know, you can think of these revolutions.

We had the industrial revolution where we brought in machining to do a load of tasks that humans did.

And then with computing, with AI, we're thinking about having the sort of cognitive revolution where a lot of our cognitive powers are taken over by machines.

But with the industrial revolution, we never nailed this dexterous capability that you would want from a robot.

Why has that been so hard?