Robots might do repetitive housework, such as cleaning, scrubbing, and washing-up, but it was unlikely they would do creative work such as cooking, Professor Meredith W. Thring, professor of mechanical engineering, Queen Mary College, London, said yesterday.

He told the International Congress of Industrial Design in London: “I do not believe that it any computer or robot can ever be built which has emotions in it and, therefore, which can do anything original or anything which is more sophisticated than it has been programmed to do by a human being. I do not believe it will ever be able to do creative work.”

It was for that reason robots could be used as slaves, to do the things human beings did not want to do. In the garden, robots might be used as slaves to mow the lawn, but the human would probably do the work on the flower beds.

Similarly, in the home one might ask the robot to do all the cleaning, scrubbing, washing-up, clothes-washing, bed-making, table-laying, and other entirely routine repetitive operations. But people would probably plan the meals and do the actual cooking, because that was creative and was also a service for humans.

“We can arrive at the society which has legitimate slaves to do all the things it doesn’t want to do and which can retain for humans all the things which they want to do.”

He envisaged the factory of the future in which human management gave instructions to a central computer which would control all the machine tools and a series of mobile robots that would carry out all the distribution and assembly tasks.

But humans would carry out the research and development to produce the designs of the new products. There would also be a human repair and maintenance crew to diagnose and correct faults in the whole system as soon as a red light indicated that something had gone wrong.

On the farm, the robots would drive suitable tractors and have an eye close to the ground in front of the tractor to detect exactly the edge of the previous furrow or guide it between the rows of vegetables.

None of the robots would look like a human being. They would be designed purely functionally. They might have an eye in the palm of the hand and the brain between their feet.