In addition, EPRI is pursuing advanced robotics for a variety of routine but high-risk tasks currently performed by line workers.

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"Robotics has advanced at the pace people thought human spaceflight would advance, " he said.

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However, he warned against focussing disproportionately on the eight areas of excellence outlined by the Chancellor in November ("big data" computing, synthetic biology, regenerative medicine, agricultural science, energy storage, space, robotics and advanced materials including nanotechnology).

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In his speech, Mr Osborne set out seven further areas where the government thinks Britain is a world leader and can and must go further: computing, synthetic biology, regenerative medicine, agricultural science, energy storage, robotics and advanced materials including nanotechnology.

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The first of those took place last July, when Abderrahmane Kheddar, director of the CNRS-AIST joint robotics laboratory at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan, and his team used FMRI to allow someone to control a robot located thousands of miles away using only their thoughts.

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It has been created by the Massachusetts robotics company Boston Dynamics and backed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

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