When Rod Brooks headed to the US after graduating from Flinders in 1977, there were just three mobile robots in existence.

Now, the iRobot company he founded has on its own produced more than 14 million – ranging from household robot vacuums to military robots tooled to detect and disarm roadside bombs. When Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant failed catastrophically after the tsunami of 2011, it was Dr Brooks’ cyber progeny that were sent into the plant on mission after mission, equipped with Geiger counters to search for areas of danger – doing work too dangerous for people. Full story.