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Discovery: Beyond The Abyss: Robots that Care

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Robots that Care

07/11/2011 GMT

Beyond The Abyss

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In the first of two programmes, Jon Stewart investigates the rise of social robots.

Jon Stewart investigates how social robots might be serving us in our homes in the future. In the first of two programmes, Stewart talks to robotocists their collaborators and volunteers

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

Discovery: Beyond The Abyss

BBC World Service

Meet the new wave of explorers who are are racing to go back to the deepest place on Earth

After more than 50 years, a new wave of explorers are racing to go back to the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on the planet.

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