For centuries, the massive marble quarries above the Tuscan city of Carrara have provided the raw material for the polished masterpieces of Italian sculptors such as Michelangelo, Canova, Bernini and, more recently, ABB2. Carving with pinpoint precision, and at least some of the art style of its more celebrated (and human) predecessors, ABB2, a 13-foot zinc alloy robotic arm, extended its rotating wrist and diamond-coated finger toward a gleaming piece of White marble.

Slowly and steadily, ABB2 milled the stone slab, leaving the contours of the smooth cabbage leaves for a sculpture designed and commissioned by a renowned American artist. ABB2 is not a lone robotic genius toiling in anthropomorphic solitude. Just a few feet away, in an installation full of robots, Quantek2 was rubbing another block of marble, executing a statue imagined by a British artist who had engaged manual labor on a robotic hand.