Online Video Guide

To be really useful, robots need to behave as cooperative partners rather than mindless machines. We'll meet three robots -- including a future member of an astronaut team -- that are trying to better understand us. Alan meets Ripley - a robot that consists of an arm and a hand with eyes and that tries to understand the world around it. That world is pretty much constrained to a white tabletop, a few objects on the table and - at least while Alan is visiting - Alan's face. Ripley, like a human infant, is learning what things are not just by giving them a name but by experiencing them. The robot responds to Alan's request to pick up the heavy one by weighing the two objects on the table in front of it.