Your virtual butler is coming. You know, eventually.

Scienceline

If you’re anything like me, you can’t wait until the sci-fi dream of having an android do all of your busywork becomes reality. In the movies, robots walk around just like people, but the robots we have in real life pale in comparison. I set out to learn how far away we are from getting advanced, sentient machines. I spoke to Jizhong Xiao, who heads the robotics program at the City College of New York about the robots he’s developed, what makes them different from the androids of Star Wars, and what it would take to reach that next level.