In the first of a two-part series, Jon Stewart charts the advances in robotics that are increasingly leading to direct one-to-one contact between humans and robots. Jon visits robotocists and their collaborators in the US and UK and asks how the robots will be used in the future. He examines the way cinema has shaped our ideas of robots and investigates the gulf between our expectations of what robots can do and the reality.A fundamental question that scientists are posing is how we should consider the robots who, in the near future, will live alongside us in our homes. Should they be considered slaves, pets or friends? Jon also explores how the ideas of author Isaac Asimov, that firstly robots should do no harm, have evolved over the decades.Photo: Getty

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