State of Robotics
I don't keep with robotics as much as I used to, back in the day when my main hobby was soldering transistors and little capacitors on BEAM-style solar-powered robots.
But every now and then I ask aloud, "So where's my robot butler already?"
The Times has a piece up about the current state of robotics, and why we may have to wait a while longer before a machine will be able to do more than the most rudimentary, repetitive tasks.
The focus then, is to take advantage of where machines excel (they don't get bored, for example) and have them do extremely tedious chores, such as waiting for soil to dry and then watering it.
There's also a video of a mini-helicopter robot. It doesn't do much other than hover, but that's way more than I was able to ever build.