These robots can clean, exercise - and care for your elderly parents. Would you trust them to? Hidden away in a lab in north-west London three black metal robotic hands move eerily on an engineering work bench. We're not trying to build Terminator, jokes Rich Walker, director of Shadow Robot, the firm that made them. Bespectacled, with long hair and a beard and moustache, he seems more like a latter-day hippy than a tech whizz, and he is clearly proud as he shows me around his firm.

In 2013, US robotics company Boston Dynamics revealed its new robot, Atlas. Unveiled at the Darpa Robotics Challenge, the 6ft 2in humanoid could walk on uneven ground, jump off boxes, and even climb stairs. It was like a vision frequently depicted in fiction: a robot designed to operate like us, able to take on all manner of everyday tasks. It seemed like the dawn of something. Robots were going to do all of our boring and arduous chores, and step up as elderly care workers to boot.

The Shadow Robot Dexterous Hand is a robot hand, with size, shape, and movement capabilities similar to those of a human hand. To give the robotic hand the ability to learn how to manipulate objects researchers from WMG, University of Warwick, have developed new AI algorithms. Robot hands can be used in many applications, such as manufacturing, surgery and dangerous activities like nuclear decommissioning. For instance, robotic hands can be very useful in computer assembly where assembling microchips requires a level of precision that only human hands can currently achieve. Thanks to the utilization of robot hands in assembly lines, higher productivity may be achieved whilst securing reduced exposure from work risk situations to human workers.