But there are plenty of dull, dirty, and dangerous gigs out there that humanity wouldn't mind turning over to the machines. Indeed, a robot called Taurus from SRI International has already begun its takeover of one of the most dangerous jobs on Earth: bomb disposal. Sure, bomb disposal robots have been rolling the earth for some time. But now SRI has taken its already brilliant bot and made it ... brillianter, by outfitting Taurus with virtual reality. Before, Taurus' operators watched a 3-D monitor to see the world through the robot's eyes, then manipulated controls that translated their movements into the movement of the robot's hands and graspers.

The fundamental technology behind the da Vinci Surgical System was originally developed at SRI International, and it's not like they've been sitting around building thumb-twiddling robots since then. This is Taurus, a little manipulator robot that was unveiled to the public for the first time at the National Robotics Week Robot Block Party at Stanford's VAIL automotive research lab. When I say Taurus is little, it's because the robot was specifically designed to fold itself into a box shape that's a mere 14" wide and 5" tall [36 cm wide and 13 cm tall]. It needs to be so compact because of what its job is: Taurus is meant to be shoved into small spaces in vehicles to detect and defeat vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. It doesn't have wheels or legs or anything like that; instead, it's intended to be mounted directly onto the robotic arm of a Talon or a PackBot, which is an innovative way to go.

Teleoperated robot-assisted surgery (RAS) is becoming more popular in certain types of surgical procedures due to its dexterity, precision, high-resolution, accurate motion planning and execution capabilities, compared to traditional minimally invasive surgery which relies on hindered laparoscopic control. The most widely adopted system based on this paradigm is the daVinci robot (2014), in which the surgeon manipulates joysticks in a master console using 3D imaging for guidance. Then robotic arms mimic the surgeon's movements on the patient's side.