Robots

I found this article on robots this afternoon. Its rather interesting how in the past robots were portrayed in science fiction as being humanoid or at least mimicking living organisms. There was Data from Star Trek, C3PO and R2D2 from Star Wars (among others), not to mention Transformers, K9 from Doctor Who (there's that reference again), Johnny 5 from Short Circuit and many others that featured in various programs and movies. But now we see robots in forms such as large arms or other parts of the body that are used in factories to mass produce products as well as the robots constructed for deep sea and space explorations. There are even robot toys like robopup and robokitty. Not to mention the cleaning robots that are being marketed now. Many people thought robots that were self directing would never exist. Maybe we won't have robots like Data (more appropriately named androids), but who knows? Technology will never cease to astound me.