Will the robots arrive at last?

According to this article a robot component manufacturer has announced that "the robot would emerge as the driving force of electronics this century, akin to computers and automobiles in the last century." Of course, they would say that, but it did make me think about how I view robots. We've been promised useful robots for so many decades that at the back of my mind I've almost dismissed them as something that will never materialise, overtaken in the I-want-it-now stakes by those trendy young upstarts genetics and nanotech. But maybe robots are almost here! At least they would be able to entertain us while we wait decades for our self-constructing home nano-gene-labs to ship. (via Generation5)