A friend in the robotics industry once joked that there were key differences between American and Japanese robots: American robots were often built to be behind the scenes in factories, while Japanese robots were merely advertising. Take a look at ASIMO to see what he meant.

I personally chose to stay out of a robotics career because I saw so much potential wasted on (what I thought) were nonsensical things. I felt the onus was on designers to "humanize" them as much as possible when that lead to expensive, fragile solutions. iRobot is a perfect example of the opposite of this -- the Roomba navigation system is incredibly simple, stupid, and robust. It's as cheap and simple as you can make it while still getting the job done. Yet, people demanded a robot that would scan the room and clean 'like a person does.' Robots aren't people, stop designing like them. These are the kinds of things that will actually help us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFW7VQpY-Ik&feature=relat...