Many people think of robots that think and act like human as the stuff of the future or characters in science fiction movies. But a recent competition at an American university demonstrated that intelligent robots are already here. Philip Graitcer reports.

MAN walks into a bar: “Ouch!” You might not find it funny, but at least you got the joke. That’s more than can be said for computers, which, despite radical advances in artificial intelligence, remain notably devoid of a funny bone.

Inspired by the efficient swimming motion of the bluegill sunfish, MIT researchers are building a mechanical fin that could one day propel robotic submarines.

Two NASA robots are surveying a rocky, isolated polar desert within a crater in the Arctic Circle, and according to a study, this will help scientists learn how robots evaluate potential outposts on the Moon or Mars.

Israeli researchers have developed the smallest micro robot designed to crawl inside the human body's smallest tubes.

The mutts are metal, the size of toy poodles, with four pointy feet ending in little balls. They need to learn how to make their way on those little feet across a treacherous terrain of broken rocks. University of Southern California roboticist Stefan Schaal has just won renewal of a $1.5 million DARPA contract to train them to do so.

‘Transformers’ is an action movie with rich computer graphics and robots turning into cars.

Robot soldiers got a little closer to reality Thursday as a maker of floor-cleaning automatons cooperated with a stun-gun manufacturer to arm robots for the police and the U.S. Department of Defense.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) engineers are organizing the fourth in a series of Response Robot Evaluation Exercises for urban search and rescue (US&R) responders to be held on June 18-22, 2007, at Texas A&M's "Disaster City" training facility in College Station, Texas.

"I WILL never leave a fallen comrade." So states the US Soldier's Creed, and true to that vow, 22-year-old Sergeant Justin Wisniewski died in Iraq last month while searching for soldiers abducted during an ambush on 12 May.

Robotic surgery may be coming to your town. Robots that perform surgery can be driven by surgeons who no longer stand by the patient, but direct the operation from a computer console. In most cases the surgeon is seated at a console within the theatre, only a few metres away from the patient.