Meet the robot astronauts and waiters helping humans

The online shopping company Amazon has been trying out human-like robots in its warehouses.

The new robots - called Digit - walk around on two legs like humans and have arms that can pick up and move people's packages, orders and objects with their grippy hands.

Digit is a prototype - which means the first, test version of something - and Amazon wants to see if it can work alongside humans, to help take on some of the "highly repetitive tasks".

The tech giant says it now has more than 750,000 robots working with its human staff, but wanted to stress that humans were "irreplaceable".

However, some worker who are members of a union at Amazon do not think the robots are a good idea, as they worry they could replace human jobs one day.

A union is an association of workers that wants to make things better in their workplace.

Scroll down to find out more about other robots giving humans a helping hand, and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Valkyrie - the Astrobot

The BBC's science reporter Victoria Gill went to meet the robot in 2016

Meet Valkyrie, the humanoid robot designed to help Nasa on space missions.

Valkyrie stands at 1.8 metres tall and weighs 125 kilograms. It was built by NASA-JSC in 2015 and was delivered to the University of Edinburgh for testing and research in 2016.

The researchers hope Valkyrie can be trained to complete important tasks in environments that would be too dangerous for humans, both in space and on Earth.

For example, NASA hopes to send Valkyrie to the Moon and Mars, to work at the long-term worksites and villages that will be built there as part of the Artemis missions.

Disaster recovery bots

Engineers at Boston Dynamics - a robotics company in the US - have been working for many years to create robots that can walk on difficult terrain.

The robots - like Atlas in the video here - have been developed using funding from the US government to help with search and rescue missions after natural disasters.

They can also be used to deliver aid to people in hard to reach areas.

Atlas can use its parkour skills to potentially reach an injured person, and other robots, like Spot - the dog-like robot - can help to open doors and bring aid across tricky ground.

Waiter robots

Meow. Orders up!

There are tens of thousands of robot waiters working in cafes and restaurants all over the world, like this cat waiter called BellaBot, which has been built by the Chinese firm PuduTech.

BellaBot has four trays and is capable of holding up to 10kg of food. It also has a screen to show different facial expressions.

It meows when it arrives at tables to encourage customers to pick up their food and looks happy when people rub its ears, but it gets angry if they pet it for too long - it has got a job to do after all.

Shopping delivery robots

If you find going shopping at your local supermarket a bit boring, then you might find these delivery robots to be up your street.

They've been created by Starship technologies and can deliver groceries, parcels and takeaways to people living in the town.

The robots are fully autonomous, which means there isn't anybody controlling them in real-time, and they find their way by themselves.

Each one is fitted with a 360 degree camera to help it to navigate and not bump into people or things.