Machines that can mate and produce offspring can help us clean up nuclear sites, explore asteroids and terraform distant planets – but could they prove a threat, asks Emma Hart, who is helping develop them
Technology
23 February 2022
By Emma Hart
Ruby Fresson
ROBOTS have come a long way in the century since Czech writer Karel Čapek used the word to describe artificial automata. Once largely confined to factories, they are now found everywhere from the military and medicine to education and underground rescue. People have created robots that can make art, plant trees, ride skateboards and explore the ocean’s depths. There seems no end to the variety of tasks we can design a machine to do.
But what if we don’t know exactly what our robot needs to be capable of? We might want it to clean up a nuclear accident where it is unsafe to …
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