Can we manufacture intimacy?
With huge proportions of our population suffering with chronic loneliness, we are seeing a rise of interactive machines including humanoid robots, robotic animals, and on-screen avatars.
In this first installment of the "Science & Eternity" series we meet with Professor John Wyatt, ethicist on developments in AI and robotics, and travel around Japan in search of answers to the question - is the connection that we feel with each other replicable in machines?