Robots will clean up 'in five years'

They'll do household chores

- By Hanna Geissler

HUMANOID robots that help with boring chores like laundry could be available in around five years, a top expert predicts.

The stuff of science fiction films such as Subservience, in which Megan Fox plays an AI android that completes housework, could soon become reality - minus the inevitable scenes where the machine becomes self-aware and goes rogue.

Professor Pulkit Agrawal, who leads a robotics lab at research university MIT in Boston, US, said the first household robots would likely be comparable in price to a car between £15,000 to £40,000.

He said despite Silicon Valley companies "promising" that robots would be available to buy this year, he thinks it will be at least five years, possibly even up to a decade.

Prof Agrawal added: "In the physical world, things just take time to roll out.