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London Exhibition Charts 500 Years of Evolution of Robots | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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‘Robots’ explores what it means to be human. Reuters photo


London- When you step into a huge robots’ exhibition at the Science Museum in London, you feel like it’s a pure technical exhibition that deals with innovations. However, this impression changes once you find out it’s about a “500-year quest to make machines human.”

The “Robots” exhibition will feature over 100 models in what the museum calls the most significant collection of humanoid robots ever displayed.

The exhibition starts with the sample of a new-born child that moves his hands and makes voices. It is among the new possessions of the exhibition and stimulates the emotions of visitors with some programmed movements like moving hands, breathing and sneezing.

This robot is usually used in movies instead of real children as it looks like a real human being.

The exhibition is composed of five pavilions with one of them featuring how robots were created based on religious beliefs; this pavilion exhibits an automaton monk made in 1560 that hides its hands under its robe, while showing simple movements of hands and lips in sign of prayer.

Among the most amazing pieces at the London show is a mechanical silver swan on loan from the Bowes Museum that will remain part of the exhibition until March 23. The wind-up bird dates back to around 1773 and performs a 37-second routine to music in which it preens its own neck before plucking a fish from a flowing filigree stream and swallowing it.

A pavilion at the museum was dedicated for dreams and future predictions in the field of robots which usually appear in movies. Ben Russell, the lead curator of the exhibition, said that robots have always been present in the popular culture since people used the term “robot” in 1920. The exhibition also shows the T-Terminator Robot used in “Terminator Salvation” starred by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Visitors can also meet the first robot developed in the UK known as “Erik.”