Photos: Androids, learning bots and flying drones

The machines of the Innorobo conference...

Robots of every shape and size were on show at the recent Innorobo conference in France.

Nearly 10,000 people registered to attend the three-day summit, which examined the role that service robots will play in everyday life.

This photo shows the Embodied Cognition in a Compliantly Engineered robot, or ECCE robot, which has been designed to have a "truly human-like" upper body.

Researchers plan to use the robot to test hypotheses about human motion and compare the motion of the machine with that of people.

The robot is designed to mimic human behaviour at every level, from the way muscles work to control movement of the limbs and the way the human brain interacts with muscles.

ECCE is a cyclops - the single camera in the eyeball-like structure in its head has a 90-degree field of vision - but future versions will have binocular vision. Future versions of the robot will also be able to reproduce human movement more accurately.

The DARwIn-OP humanoid robot, seen here, was at the event playing football.

The bot's hardware and software is open source, making the bot fully customisable.

The machine, which is designed by Romela, weighs in at 6lb and is 18 inches tall.

Here the Sparx robot, produced by French robotics services company Robopolis, navigates its way around a maze on the show floor.

Users can stream real-time video of what the programmable bot is seeing through its built-in camera.

This is Nao, an autonomous, programmable humanoid robot, developed by the French company Aldebaran Robotics.

The flying Parrot AR.Drone can be controlled via an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Linux PC - with commands sent to the bot via wi-fi.

This robotic arm, made by Schunk, is an example of the modular design in which the company specialises.

A mobile robot fitted with a webcam from the show floor.