If you worry that the robots are coming, don't, because they are already here. Artificial intelligence agents are already involved in every aspect of our lives - they keep our inboxes free of spam, they help us make our web transactions, they fly our planes and if Google gets its way will also soon drive our cars for us. "AI's are embedded in the fabric of our everyday lives," head of AI at Singularity University, Neil Jacobstein, told the BBC. "They are used in medicine, in law, in design and throughout automotive industry." And each day the algorithms that power away, making decisions behind the scenes, are getting smarter.

Meet Atlas, a humanoid robot capable of crossing rough terrain and maintaining its balance on one leg even when hit from the side. These are the latest creations of Boston Dynamics, a US robotics company part-funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). The robots are part of Darpa's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation programme. Darpa says such robots "hold great promise for amplifying human effectiveness in defence operations". Referring to Atlas's ability to remain balanced despite being hit by a lateral weight, Noel Sharkey, professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Sheffield, told the BBC: "This is an astonishing achievement... quite a remarkable feat."

The story of how the Colossus computer at Bletchley Park aided the allied code-cracking effort during World War II is becoming well known. Its claim to be a forerunner of modern-day computers is also well established. What is much less well known is the tale of how Colossus's story came to be told in the first place. It is a tale of how one man's dogged efforts overcame official secrets and official indifference to rewrite computer history. Computer scientist Brian Randell was the man who started uncovering the history of Colossus.

A US team aims to build a robot that can work out how to use nearby objects to solve problems or escape threats. The machine has been dubbed a MacGyver Bot, after the TV character who cobbled together devices to escape life-threatening situations. The challenge is to develop software that "understands" what objects are in order to deduce how they can be used. The US Navy is funding the project and says the machines might ultimately be deployed alongside humans. It is providing $900,000 (£562,000) to robotics researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology to carry out the work.

One of the UK's earliest humanoid robots has been unearthed after spending 45 years stored in a garage. The robot's creator, Tony Sale, talks about how George came about. Rationing during and after World War II gave rise to the make do and mend ethos that saw many people exercise their ingenuity to feed and clothe themselves. Some, such as Tony Sale, took the scavenging attitude far beyond simply unravelling woollen socks to help patch a pullover. In 1950 Mr Sale, then aged 19, created a robot named George out of scrap metal that came from a crashed Wellington bomber. Pilot Officer Sale, as he was then, was stationed at RAF Debden where he was employed to teach pilots how to use radar.

A Canadian firm has courted controversy with its claim to have built a practical quantum computer, a feat thought to be decades away. Now, independent researchers are trying to understand whether it really can tap the strange world of quantum physics. For the modest sum of $15m (£9m), a start-up near Vancouver will sell you a black box the size of a garden shed with its logo emblazoned on the side in white neon. What if I told you the contents of the box were kept colder than the temperature of interstellar space? How about this: The box contains a machine that can solve some of the thorniest mathematical problems and could revolutionise computing.

Sleepiness and stress are perennial risks for the long distance lorry driver, and accidents are sadly too frequent. However, a radical new driverless truck being trialled by Daimler may offer a solution. Earlier this month, the automotive giant was granted the first licence ever to test such a vehicle on a public highway by the US state of Nevada. Using a combination of GPS, radar and video cameras, the Freightliner Inspiration can drive by itself on open stretches of road, freeing a driver to take breaks, check his emails and even watch DVDs. The catch is that a qualified person must remain in front of the wheel at all times so they can take control if something goes wrong.

EXPERT SYSTEMS Computers as sages by Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold is the author of Software Odyssey and co-author of Higher Creativity. Should you ever want to drill for oil, diagnose a disease or synthesize a new molecule, you can ask Prospector, MYCIN or Dendral for some sage advice. They are certified experts in their respective fields. They are also computer programs. We all depend on expert assistance-from doctors, attorneys, automobile mechanics, computer repairmen.

Unmanned drones providing sustained surveillance, swift precise attacks on high-value targets and small robots are used for missions to counter improvised explosive devices. The systems are generally remotely piloted and rely on near-continuous control by a human operator. Researchers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory Human Research and Engineering Directorate, or HRED, are developing robot intelligence that will enable robots to successfully navigate (move around) in their environment when given a voice command (instruction) by a human. Army researchers say the future for unmanned systems lies in the development of highly capable systems with "a set of intelligence-based capabilities sufficient to enable the teaming of autonomous systems with Soldiers." To act as teammates, robotic systems will need to reason about their missions, move through the world in a tactically correct way, observe salient events in the world around them, communicate efficiently with Soldiers and other autonomous systems and effectively perform a variety of mission tasks. The Symbolic and Sub-Symbolic Robotics Intelligence Control System, or SS-RICS, which was developed by HRED in cooperation with Towson State University in 2004, combines symbolic and sub-symbolic representations of knowledge into a unified control structure.

The United States and 70 other nations are investing in voice recognition databases that will allow governments to identify criminals or suspects based on brief recordings. A leader in the development of "voice-prints" storage is Russia's Speech Technology Center, known as SpeechPro in the U.S. The company has developed the capability to tuck away millions of recorded voices that governments can later use to identify persons of interests. The system, called "VoiceGrid Nation," can match a recording to a database entry in only five seconds (based on a scan of 10,000 voices), with an accuracy of 90%. Dozens of countries have invested in the company's biometric technology, with the biggest markets in the Western Hemisphere, Europe and Asia. These include dictatorships, such as those of Belarus and Uzbekistan.