Robots Special: The humanoid robots of fiction and today's industrial robots are as far from each other as chalk from cheese. But slowly robots are being incorporated into systems capable of bringing some of the flexibility of man on to the factory floor. Robotics scientists are making great headway in giving robots vision, touch and even the ability to play a mean game of table tennis. Explaining developments is Professor Mike Brady , who recently returned to Britain from one of America's leading technological universities to run an Oxford research team.