Duke University

The day may be getting a little closer when robots will perform surgery on patients in dangerous situations or in remote locations, such as on the battlefield or in space, with minimal human guidance.

Earlier this year in a lab at Duke University, in Durham, N.C., a clever, raisin-gobbling ­monkey named Idoya made a robot move in Japan—just by thinking. And she wasn’t alone. She joined ranks with, among others, a ­paraplegic man who recently used his brain to move a cursor around a computer screen.

When James Bond appeared in Die Another Day with an invisible Aston Martin, many cinema-goers thought the producers had gone a little too far.