If you listen carefully, a murmur proclaiming an era of personal robots is getting steadily louder. In 2007, for example, the BBC reported that South Korea’s government was predicting a robot in every household in that country by 2020. Could it be that, finally, the age-old dream of mechanical slaves to attend to our every whim is almost within our grasp?

Dr Alexander Ferrein from the RWTH Aachen University in Germany, who is currently carrying out post-doctoral research at the University of Cape Town’s Robotics and Agents Research Lab, suggests that we’re perhaps getting a little ahead of ourselves here – and not for the first time.