SOME may be sent as far as Mars, while others could end up squashed on the M27. The most intelligent forms of artificial life gathered in Winchester this week but it would seem we are some way off creating robots of the like seen in new Disney animation WALL-E.

Biologists, computer scientists, mathematicians, social scientists and even philosophers were atWinchester university for the 11th Alife conference, which was being held in Europe for the first time.

Richard Evans, senior consultant engineer for Roke, a Romsey-based innovative solutions company, said: "Lifelike robots are a long way off but a lot of the capabilities of these artificial life systems are things that we need to make robots work in practice.

"The main issue is how do you make a robot system work reliably and that's something that I think has a lot to learn from artificial life systems."

Dora - Roke's latest invention - is able to work out where obstacles are and plot a map of its surrounding area.

In the real world, that could help emergency services establish the safety of a damaged building or even help the military detect explosives in war zones such as Afghanistan or Iraq.

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At the other end of the spectrum, swarm robots, developed by the University of Southampton, gain intelligence collectively.

Student Alexis Johnson has helped develop swarm robots, based on the natural intelligence ant colonies and bees.

He said: "As part of our project we wanted to build a number of robots very cheaply so we could test swarm behaviour in real life.

"Currently we have about 25 robots but the aim is to have a couple of hundred - if not thousands.

"At present we programme these things and then we see how these programmes behave in a large group, currently we can only simulate such behaviour but then there's a big gap between simulation and real life."

One potential use of the robots could be to indicate areas where there has been a road accident.

The robots work as a swarm instead of individually so the loss of one or two does not mean that the overall aim cannot be achieved.

Another more domesticbased creation on show was the Mural robot, which reacts with music by moving in different ways - think of it as a dancing iPod.

University of Tokyo student Eric Silverman, originally from America is helping develop the robot.

He said: "The robot will act in accordance with the type of music, so if you play a heavy rock song, the robot will move in sharp and more aggressive ways; if the song is slow, it may take longer more sweeping and graceful turns.

"At present, Mural works on just two wheels, but we are working on a more human-like form with more moving components."

However, the experts are still some way off bringing the different forms of robot together to create an "intelligent", fully-functioning robot just like WALL-E.

Derek Long, also from Roke, said: "Most robots in research are based on two or three layers of control.

"They have a deliberative layer of control at the top, which does the cognitive work, they have a sensory layer and a reactive layer, which works like the swarming robots.

"Both of these technologies, the swarming technology and the deliberative technology are going to be part of successful solutions for robots that could work in human environments."