Ian McIntosh is a professional skier who routinely hits the slopes to shoot awe-inspiring videos. But his career nearly ended while working on a video for Teton Gravity Research. According to the company, which uploaded the footage, "[Ian] dropped into a line he thought he had studied thoroughly enough, only to fall into an unseen five foot deep trench on one of his first turns.

The inspiration for this project stemmed in part from my visit to a cold storage facility outside Philadelphia. I donned all the clothing that warehouse workers wear, which made the temperature manageable in the main room. But in the deep freezer room, where temperatures can be -30 °C or even colder, I barely lasted 10 minutes.

What if we could create a robotic fish that moved alongside marine creatures and mammals like a regular member of the aquatic neighborhood? That would give us a phenomenal window into undersea life.

" McIntosh pulled his "air bag" which inflates to protect the wearer from impact injuries and tried to stop his momentum. It took him 1,600 vertical feet to stop himself, clinging to the side of a mountain.

This means robots can learn a new task — such as how to use a hammer or turn a screw — and then apply it in different settings.

When the manual brakes on the truck locked up, they also sparked, igniting some of the lumber. As you see in the video, Wilson weaves the truck back and forth to dump his cargo, almost hitting a school bus. Luckily, Wilson was caught without anyone getting hurt and he was later sentenced to 99 years in prison with the option of parole in 15 years.

One minute you're minding your business, then someone sends you a link that you assume to be a funny YouTube video, and What are the cons to robots the next thing you know, you're watching a video of an adult in a full-body cat suit and party wig aggressively twerking to Beyonce, or an educational children's show that transforms into a terrifying hellscape.

Von Hollen remembers one of his customers based in a rural part of the US, whose business sands and polishes metal parts. "It was his son who had called us in," says von Hollen.

“But the changes resulted in a new robot that could handle boxes faster, could work longer hours, and could operate in tight spaces, such as a truck. So humanoid research led to a useful non-humanoid robot.”

But while the rules recognise that the nature of robotic work has changed, they still show some uncertainty when it comes to actually deploying the technology.

But what I mean more specifically is the systems have to be able to understand speech and they need to be able to convert the understanding of speech into action, which will satisfy job roles across the entire economy".

Tedrake at Toyota Research Institute says the recent proliferation of robot hardware, from automatons on factory floors to home devices such as Roomba vacuum cleaners, should also help fill this data gap. The more robots that exist, the more visual data of them completing actions will be available.

To all robot makers and researchers who kindly helped us with information and materials, and allowed us to feature their amazing projects here.

Particular care needs to be taken in the case of customer-facing cobots, such as those found in the hospitality sector. "The concept of service robots is robots that can be used where almost anyone can be exposed to the hazards," Nelson Shea told ZDNet.