Household robots are here, but their real promise is decades away

Social robots like Amazon's Echo can play music and tell you the weather today, but their real promise is potentially decades away.

Social robots like the quasi-anthropomorphic Jibo and Amazon's far more utilitarian Echo are beginning to find their places in our living rooms. The consensus seems to be that they are pretty cool but leave a lot to be desired. These robots perform a lot of the functions that smartphones and tablets do — which is to say, they're fun but superfluous. They also need to get better at recognizing speech or reliably calling up requested information.

But focusing on what home robots can do now might be the wrong way to look at it. The more interesting question is, what will they be able to do in five years, or 10, or 50? All we know for sure is: a lot more than they do now. Read more...