Robotics labs in the United States and Japan open their doors for this Discovery Channel production, built around researchers pushing machines toward autonomy and, maybe, something like awareness. Rodney Brooks at MIT shows off robots built on insect-like behavior rather than centralized planning, arguing that intelligence can emerge from simple parts working together. Red Whittaker at Carnegie Mellon demonstrates machines built to go where people can't, into mines, disaster zones, and eventually other planets. The film sets these working prototypes against the robots of film and television, the androids and assistants pop culture has been imagining for decades, and asks how far the real labs are from that fantasy. Engineers and roboticists talk through the mechanics of walking, grasping, and sensing, and the harder question of whether any of it adds up to a mind. Made in 1998, it catches the field at an earlier stage than it's known for since, a useful marker of what counted as cutting edge before robots left the lab for the home and the battlefield.