Here is an interesting article from a researcher in Thailand talking about the next revolution in Robotics. I have to say that I am not quite as optimistic as they are, though this is my chosen field and I do love it. It is just that replicating human senses and actuation is very very hard to do. Basically, the most advanced robots today have a hard time doing what a 2-3 year old does quite naturally.
The mainstay job that robots have been doing over the past decade or two hasn’t really changed that much, basically helping out us humans by doing the repetitive jobs, mostly in big industry. But this is set to change over the next 20 to 30 years.Posted by elkaim at January 14, 2004 7:29 PM“Robots in the future will no longer be just a basic machine but a living agent that can interact naturally with people. They will transfer knowledge and wisdom from generation to generation, making invaluable knowledge immortal,” said Djitt Laowattana, the director of the Institute of Field Robotics (Fibo) at King Mongkut’s University of Technology, Thonburi.