Robotic Nation Evidence

Robotics: Grow Up!

From the article:

"I came to this conclusion after the recent RoboBusiness Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's where robotics technology vendors, engineers, university professors, and success-hungry venture capitalists meet to try to make robotics magic happen. The show was successful, in that there were more attendees than last year and five times as many exhibitors. It was also terribly frustrating.
I searched every nook and cranny of the show floor for the next Roomba or Wow Wee. What I found was one small robotic shop or parts vendor after another with a great idea for a military, surveillance, or helper robot. Most were not market-ready, and those that were stood a very small chance for success. And then there was Roomba (Wow Wee was not exhibiting) in the middle of it all, the one shining example of commercial success in this adolescent industry."

The roomba is blind, it has no hands, and it has no idea what it is doing. It solves one specific problem in a very simple way, making it inexpensive enough for many people to afford.

The thing that is holding robots back is the fact that, to do most "normal" problems around the house that people would like to do (e.g. doing the laundry, washing the dishes, dusting, painting, picking up the kid's toys, vacuuming the stairs, etc.) you need to have a good vision system, good hands and a certain amount of intelligence/trainability (e.g. - put Bobby's shirts on hangers in this closet).

Right now, we don't have the processing power for the vision system, and we are still working on the notion of intelligence. In 20 to 30 years we will have all the processing power we need, and at that point robots will explode. See Robotic Nation for details.