Intelligent Robots Will Soon Leave the Realm of Science Fiction

One of the oldest dreams of science has been creating a human-like machine. Teams of researchers have been working for half a century to create machines that can do useful work and also share some characteristics of animals and humans — in other words, robots.

We are all familiar with robotic factories that manufacture such things as cars. That’s a very different sort of concept, though, from “autonomous robots.” Industrial robotics involves very expensive prearranged pathways that machines travel on for the purpose of welding or.....