The robot reached out and pushed Mr Urada into a grinder with its powerful hydraulic arm. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot.

Since then, there have been many more gruesome industrial deaths involving robots who have crushed humans, smashed them on the head and even poured molten aluminium over them. And as robots emerge from the factory floor into homes and workplaces, and develop to a point where they can make their own decisions, there are growing demands that they should be bound by ethical laws.

As part of its bid to put a robot in every household by 2015, South Korea has just drawn up a code of ethics for robots as they become a vital part of daily life. Meanwhile, at a meeting last month in Rome, the European Robotics Research Network called on the European Commission to set up a robot ethics committee to deal with the problems of hostility to and from robots as well as avoiding accidents, tracing their location and monitoring the nature of their intelligence.

Countries such as South Korea and Japan, which suffer from some of the lowest birth rates in the world but have opted against large-scale immigration, are increasingly turning to robots to meet their manpower shortage. Unheralded advances in automation mean that robots are in production that will be able to look after children and the elderly, do routine housework, guard criminals and hunt down terrorists.

In Japan, where humanoid robots aimed at being more aesthetically pleasing to the public are about to hit assembly lines, robots are gradually replacing humans in the menial jobs that are increasingly hard to fill.

In response to the vocations crisis in the priesthood, a bearded robo-priest is on call 24 hours a day at the Yokohama Central Cemetary to perform funerals, while at Tokyo’s University of Science, visitors are greeted by a robo-receptionist in a uniform who answers questions and gets bored when there’s nothing to do.

Japanese robots have learned to run, lean over and pour tea. With an ageing, infirm population placing enormous pressure on the healthcare system, the government has laid down deadlines to ensure their entry in human environments.

By next year, robots will be expected to work as cleaners. By 2013, they will be able to make beds, and by 2016, to lift and carry the sick.

A so-called ‘nursebot’, able to check patients to see if they have taken their medication and contact doctors if vital signs are awry, will soon appear on Japanese wards. It will also be designed for elderly people who live alone, capable of taking blood-pressure readings and setting off alarms if their ‘companion’ doesn’t move for a period of time.

Robots are taking on the role of child-minders, too. A children’s companion device on the market in Japan can identify faces. It knows if someone is missing from a group and can hold a conversation and dance with its owner. It can also send images to absent parents.

For now, robots are programmed to make certain decisions but are unable to think for themselves. But as technology develops, they are likely to have more sophisticated self-learning mechanisms built into them, and it may become impossible to predict how they will behave.

In order to protect humans from harm and robots from abuse, scientists believe strict rules must be laid down for human-robot interaction before super- intelligent robots develop beyond our control. In one of the most famous science fiction series of all time, Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, robots were friendly machines dedicated to helping people. This is the role countries such as South Korea and Japan has charted for them, too.

Asimov’s robots are governed by three principles which have been adapted by South Korea in its new Robot Ethics Charter. They state that a robot (1) must not allow a human to come to any harm, (2) must obey orders given by a human except where such orders conflict with rule 1 and (3) must protect its own existence unless this contradicts the two earlier rules.

But some of the dilemmas raised by robo-ethicists at the recent Rome conference suggest that the issue is more complex. They asked if robots that are heavy enough to crush people should be allowed into the home. Is ‘system malfunction’ a justifiable defence for a robotic fighter plane that contravenes the Geneva Convention and mistakenly fires on innocent civilians? Should robotic sex dolls resembling children be legally allowed?

The development of robotic sex toys is expected to prove one of the most controversial. Vibrating and remarkably lifelike sexbots are already being developed in Japan and there are grave fears that it is only a matter of time before sex dolls resembling children are developed, feeding into the dangerous fantasies of paedophiles.

Another worrying issue is the prospect of the military using the new generation of robots capable of making their own decisions. A battlefield robot with an ‘artificial conscience’ is being developed by scientists funded by the US Pentagon, which will use radar data and intelligence feeds to make decisions based on ethical rules.

“They don’t get hungry,” a spokesman of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon said recently. “They’re not afraid. They don’t forget orders and don’t care if the next guy has been shot.”

The most politically appealing aspect of robo-soldiers is that they don’t come home in body bags, generating fears that military planners will take a more gung- ho approach to war. Within a decade, one third of American military transport is expected to be driverless while a robot has been designed in South Korea, capable of policing the border with the North, with a shoot-to-kill policy operating at a range of 500 metres.

In the future, robots will replace humans in jobs deemed too dull, dirty and dangerous, from house-sitting to toxic waste cleaning.

Designing a truly intelligent android that can think and feel remains the scientific Holy Grail, but it is closer than ever. The question is: how much power could it yield in years to come?

Robot World?

A decade from now, hospitals in countries with low birth rates and strict immigration policies will begin to replace human nurses with robots capable of administering drugs, lifting patients and turning hospital corners. As Ireland’s elderly population grows, health authorities may turn to machines to look after society’s most dependent.

Leading roboticist, Dr Gerard Lacey, a lecturer in Computer Vision and Robotics at the School of Computer Science and Statistics in Trinity, is at the forefront of robotical aids in Irish medicine. He has designed the world’s first robotic walking frame, an intelligent walker that helps people with impaired vision to navigate and avoid collisions.

“We developed the Guido Smart Walker for blind people who can’t use a cane or a guide dog because they are too frail,” says Dr Lacey. “Often they spend all day sitting around but this is a means of helping them to walk independently.

“Robotics will be used more and more in healthcare. In the US, robots deliver locked cabinets of drugs to individual wards and in Japan, where they have few nurses and an old population, there is a sharp need to replace mechanical procedures.

“Health insurers see the cost benefits of this as there are lower levels of support required in terms of human assistants and modified housing. But the social contact a carer gives can never be replaced by a machine.

“Are robots self aware? Certainly not, and it will be a long time before they achieve the level of self awareness of our pets. But there is no harm in laying down ethical guidelines now as they become more part of everyday life.”