For many decades, science fiction films and books have described and shown us a variety of humanoid robots that range from ones that look clearly mechanical and follow simple orders and have limited functionality to ones that are indistinguishable from human beings in appearance but are far stronger, faster and more capable in many ways.
And over those decades, audiences have been encouraged to imagine such robots as figments of the imagination, something for the future – a future after our own lifetimes.
Now, however, instead of waiting there for us to die and spare us from having to deal with it, that future is hurtling towards us with unsettling speed.
[Read more…] about Humanoid robots: Stepping out of science fiction, into the real world