While it doesn't yet have the dancing skills of its Japanese rivals, iCub - billed as Europe's most advanced humanoid robot - is catching up fast.rnThe toddler-sized robot - which made its debut appearance in the UK last month - is the centrepiece of the five-year ￡7.5m RobotCub programme, an EU-funded effort to advance knowledge and understanding in fields ranging from child psychology to robot cognition.rnThe project's leader, Professor Darwin Caldwell, research director at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, believes that mechanically the robot is up there with anything else around. 'Ourrnrobot is mechanically comparable to the Japanese robots,' he said. 'It has a high number of degrees of freedom and is compact and powerful. The current model has 53 degrees of freedom and later in the year it will have around 70. By the end of the year we should have a fully compliant humanoid.'
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