If you think robots are designed by engineers only, think again. Dr. Guy Hoffman is variously a musician, academic, animator and teacher. And his TED talk on robots in October 2013 in Jaffa, possibly turned him into the world's only roboticist superstar.

Once, talking to machines was considered madness or science fiction. Then, speech recognition came along and made it commonplace. Now, Israeli robot Kip 1 is another step forward – it can understand the tone of the speaker's voice – and react accordingly.