Question: Will robots ever casually roam the Earth?

David Corne answered on 17 Jun 2011:

If I win the £500, definitely! I’ve decided that, in that unlikely event, I’d buy a programmable robot and take it around to Schools and show them how to program it to roam around the classroom without bumping into things. To answer the wider question, quite possibly yes. Robotic cars (i.e. no drive, no remote control, but purely autonomous) can already drive long distances, avoiding accidents. There are even modern production cars that can park themselves. We also have autonomous aircraft, currently researched for military applications, which ain’t so nice but there you go. Robots that casually roam around in future might be policebots or just general monitorbots – like CCTV cameras searching for crime, but with legs.