Tune in to BBC1, at 5:30 on Wednesday (16:30 GMT), to see the Shadow Dexterous Hand presented on Blue Peter . Professor Noel Sharkey will be running the Shadow Hand through its paces on live TV. A tense competition of

They have been part of our collective imagination almost since we began to set down words. Mechanical beings sparked to life in the myths of ancient Greece, the Middle East, China and the Nordic countries. Today we call them robots--from