Engineers at Columbia University claim to have smashed one of the biggest barriers in the field of robotics after a mechanical arm, which had not been programmed with any instructions, began performing practical tasks after just a few hours.

The team said this is the first time a robot has shown the ability to “imagine itself”, thereby working out what its purpose is and how to perform it.

Until now, some experts had pointed to the failure to achieve this as evidence that machines would never be able to develop their own intelligence in the complex way that humans do.