Scientific American Frontiers on PBS

This look at machines explores some of the “suprisingly human things,” as host Alan Alda puts it, that human-made things can do. First, Alda watches machines play soccer at the 1999 and 2001 RoboCup tourneys, where robot designers share technology---after the matches. Alda also follows submarine races in suburban Washington, D.C., in which the machines are powered by humans. And he handles play-by-play duties at an MIT engineering contest where sophomore-built machines duke it out on a teeter-totter.