Where's My Robotic Maid?

Fifty-three years after Rosie the Robot first made dinner for the Jetsons, the field of consumer robotics is still struggling to find its groove. Robots have become commonplace in the manufacturing industry--and the military's deep-pocketed interest is growing--but only a handful of commercial robots have made it into the homes of ordinary people. What's going on? "You need four things to make a good robot," said Thomas Parrish of Openware Robotics. "It has to be useful, reliable, simple to use and affordable." At the 2005 RoboBusiness conference in Cambridge, Mass., at a panel on personal robots, the possibility was also raised that roboticists were out of touch with the needs of the general consumer. In an industry still dominated by geeky researchers, Parrish grumbled, "a lot of roboticists are trying to reinvent the wheel."

Source: Forbes

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