Maybe it’s because WALL-E is in the cinemas right now but the news is full of robots in one shape or another, it seems. Some have a fairly simple purpose in life, such as Robopong, a robot that fires table-tennis balls for anyone stuck at home without a partner. Unlike some ball-firers though, with the addition of an accessory it’s still able to pick up balls and reuse them, thus allowing you to keep playing till you drop (or pull the plug).

On the much more sedate end of the robot spectrum comes this amazing robot fish from Japan. Now, fish aren’t that exciting normally but the realism in this specimen has to be seen to be believed:

It’s thanks to the guys at the University of Kitakyushu, who are going to use it to help explore underwater without disturbing or scaring the wildlife there, which is a great idea. Although if they installed a ping-pong ball launcher it could be even more awesome…

Creating robots to do things that would be damaging or hazardous for humans is a common theme, and on the more serious side of things are the ones being used in defence and security. Today the Ministry of Defence unveiled its ideas of robots to help out our soldiers, detecting threats such as bombs, snipers and armed vehicles. And looking further in the future, according to Professor Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield, we might have robot police by the year 2084:

Sharkey said he expects robots with “human-like features and expressions” to patrol the streets of the UK to cut crime, detect weapons, carry out drink and drugs tests and free-up police officers’ time.

Chips in the brains of these tin guardians would give them instant access to bank accounts, tax, motoring, shopping and criminal records, allowing them to instantly identify and determine who people were, according to Sharkey.

That’s a far cry from a ping-pong ball machine – with robots as complex as this we’ll probably need more than just the three laws of robotics to manage robots in society, lest they run amok. Should we be worried about robots with so much power in the future, or will we be able to keep a tight control on the technology?