‘Thanks to his construction as a tendon-driven robot modelled on human beings (‘normal’ robots have their motors in their joints), Roboy moves almost as elegantly as a human,’ the team claim.

‘Our aging population is making it necessary to keep older people as autonomous as possible for as long as possible, which means caring for aged people is likely to be an important area for the deployment of service robots.

‘We can very safely assume that service robots will become part of our environment in the future, as is already the case today for technologies such as smartphones and laptops.’