For a while it was looking like a future with sci-fi robots was never going to come true. But the last couple of years have let us see how rapidly robots are growing in brain and in brawn...
Swarms of independently-minded collaborative robots are no longer the stuff of science fiction - they may soon be patrolling national borders and exploring space
James McLurkin has a novel party trick - he can coax 20 small autonomous wheeled robots to form herds, disperse again, wheel in neat circles, sing a harmonic rendition of the theme from Star Wars, and automatically recharge from a power station.
