Opening Titles - a robot 'draws' the programme title with a torch

Ian McNaught Davis is with 'Hero' - a hobbyist robot

At the Chicago robot exhibition, the sensors and actuators on Hero the hobbyist robot, Unimation industrial robots and a robot comedy routine on the Westinghouse stand.

Unimation robots have been around for twenty years but have lacked sophisticated computer control allowing them to perform precision tasks.

Modern robots welding in a car factory and machining plastic parts. A robot is any programmable, computer controlled mechanical device

Uncle Clunk is an animatronic figure destined for a pizza parlour

And the experimental Odetics spider-like robot can lift and move a car

The Westinghouse shaving robot plays a keyboard

Ian McNaught Davis shows a model robotic production line which is hard wired. To make it do something different, the logic circuits need to be altered by changing the wiring connections

Richard Fox of Westinghouse explains the difference between first, second and third generation robots: from dumb hardwired to systems to machines which recognise objects and can make decisions based on 'if then' and 'goto' commands

A third generation robot recognises and picks up a series of parts to make a switch

John Coll demonstrates a slow computer controlled conveyor belt system which can sort things by size and be reprogrammed to do different things. He explains sensors and actuators.

A very fast reactive (adaptive) system in a Lotus car monitors and controls the car's movements for a better ride.

John Coll demonstrates how a simple input and output can be interfaced to a BBC Micro and the program can be changed to make the output do different things via relay

A home made robotic system playing noughts and crosses uses a construction kit to lift and move pieces

A commercial chess playing machine with built in strategies

The BBC Buggy

End Titles & Credits