I'm Jane Wakefield and this is the BBC World Service.

Lying somewhere in the street and the arms and legs ripped off and the head missing. So first thing we did was to

try to verify those pictures images and sadly they were true. This is the story of a murder. It was very sad and it hit us more

than I ever would have expected I think. Well yeah I was a little bit choked about

it when that happened.

But immediately following, there was just an outpouring of, you know, messages.

What we didn't expect is that how much it affected us, but then also that it affected us but then also that it affected thousands of people worldwide.

No ordinary tale of an unsolved crime, the victim being described was a robot.

The robots are coming.

It's not science fiction, the robot reality is upon us.

From factories to shopping miles,

train stations and even on the battlefield,

there are bots mingling among the mundane in corners of kitchens with dishwashers or

cupboards containing vacuum cleaners which propel themselves without human help.

So is it time to consider what our relationship with the machine should look like?

What rules do we need to make the most out of machines.

So for example, if the machine does something that really irritates you

and annoys you, the machine we think should see

that you're irritated or annoyed and perhaps like your dog it

should do the equivalent of putting its ears back and its tail down and

looking like it knows it made a mistake. So the idea is that the machine will be able to select its own targets.

You'll delegate the decision to kill a human to a machine.

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