In real life, robots are pretty simple. They are just, like, an arm putting cars together or what have you. In movies and TV, though, robots have long been intelligent. They’ve had personalities. They are characters in ways real robots simply are not.

Picture a robot. What comes to mind? Perhaps a droid from Star Wars or The Jetsons: a machine that can move, speak and perform tasks all by itself. Or maybe your imagination jumps to humanoid robots à la The Terminator. But you might be surprised by the ...

Chinese robotics firm UniX AI has unveiled Panther, touted as the world’s first service