Robotic Nation Evidence

What about robosapien?
 

Why is Aibo a useful robot and not a toy?
 

If you include the roomba in there, you might as well include a bump-and-go car from Radio Shack. They have about the same level of intelligence. But I will grant that the roomba is more useful.

How about a clothes dryer that turns off when your clothes get dry? That has been available for years.

How about TiVo? It doesn't move, but it makes "intelligent" decisions based on what it thinks you would like to watch.
 

There are more robotic vacuums than the Roomba. Sharper image has one I know of, although it is not as good.
 

I'm not sure that we are talking about the same level of intelligence here. Much of the intelligence of this newer generation of robots is behind-the-scenes stuff. Sure, their not C3PO but they don't have to be to revolutionize the world. By the time a robot as intelligent as C3PO becomes available, the earlier generation of robots will be ubiquitous and part of the background. It will be interesting to watch what happens in Japan over just the next few years.
 

This is a nice round-up of robot mowers:

Robot mowers
 

These guys have different robots for the home, including a humanoid DrRobot.com
 

The watering robot is very cool.
 

Perhaps not for the home http://www.activrobots.com/index.html
 

There's a sneak preview of iRobot's new product, Scooba. What interests me about the Scooba is how similar it is to the Roomba -- the design worked, so they tweak it slightly and sell a new one.

This kind of development is more evidence of the industrialization and commoditization of robotics...

How long before there is a combination vacuumbot/mopbot that knows when to switch roles?