Disneyland Innoventions exhibit had a few glimpses into future technology, though the pace of change is now so fast that I think they have trouble capturing the “latest, greatest” stuff. Exception was a live show with ASIMO, SONY’s fantastic human sized robot. The walking and stair climbing, which are autonomous actions, were very impressive. You really got the idea you were looking at something we’ll eventually take for granted – robot helpers in the home.
Joe Duck
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Joe Duck 
Its not simply robot helpers in the home but more the workplace. Autonomous action, cooperation among agents in a sensor rich environment, vision in a non-novel environment… why hire a teenager to say ‘do you want fries with that, when you have robots as short order cooks?
It’s a good point and unless their is a price breakthrough we are going to see smart robots in business long before we see them in homes.
Homes are a more novel environment and computer aided vision is often a matter of edge detection which is more difficult in a home than in an industrial setting. Its simply that in a home a vacuum cleaner can be a novelty item but in an industrial setting there is no entertainment value that compensates for imprecision or unreliability.
We already have a situation where robots can build a home on site at about one third of current construction costs. Even bricklayers whose unions priced them out of business can be replaced by laser assisted robots. Its mainly political problems and multi-sensor vote pooling that are the impediments.
One great way to take Honda Asimo forward is to connect with Internet and Control by giving commands over net.
IN this way, it can be used to
do many human jobs.