Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots

With access to the world's leading robot-makers, they meet the trailblazing machines who pioneered key evolutionary leaps for robot-kind, and their most advanced descendants, to uncover just how far we've really come. While Ben is unnerved by the rate that robots are evolving, Danielle is welcoming them with open arms. Ben meets one of the most humanlike robots in the world - Erica - whose sense of humour falls flat. He also finds out why it's so difficult for robots to walk like us. The episode uncovers the roots with our obsession with robots in human form, with a visit to the fearsome Eric. Danielle meets an early pioneer of robotic movement, who led the way for robots to take over the workplace, and ends up in a sea of robot arms, working in beautiful robotic harmony at a car plant.

Evolutionary biologist Dr. Ben Garrod and electronics engineer Professor Danielle George investigate whether robots will ever become our friends, if we should trust them with our lives, and if one day they will even become conscious. The programme uncovers the roots of an essential ingredient of any relationship - the art of conversation. Ben visits the first attempt to make a robotic brain - a 1940s tortoise born in Bristol - with a rudimentary awareness of its surroundings, before meeting its most advanced descendant - the driverless car. Finally, we meet robots who aren't simply pre-programmed with facts about the world, they learn about it for themselves. The one-metre-high iCub not only looks like a child, but he learns like one. As robots continue to evolve, Ben and Danielle consider the unsettling question of what it would mean if robots developed consciousness.