"Did Google need to make robot cars in order to make Streetview work? Absolutely not. It's the equiva..." — Colin Angle

In the smart home of the future, there should be a robot designed to talk to you. With enough display technology, connectivity, and voice recognition, this human-interface robot or head-of-household robot will serve as a portal to the digital domain. It becomes your interface to your robot-enabled home.

You're not going to talk to your vacuum cleaning robot: in fact, you may never see your vacuum cleaning robot because, ideally, you come home every day and your floors are freshly vacuumed.

It's going to be interesting to see how society deals with artificial intelligence, but it will definitely be cool.

The ideal vacuum cleaner would be one you never see. It needs to not just be a cool gadget, but a product that cleans your floor correctly. I can imagine people having a cupboard full of robots that only come out when you need them to fulfil a specific purpose.