OUR ROBOTIC PICTURE

Will mechanical helpers ever be commonplace at home, at work and beyond?

- Ben Guarino

Bed making is one household task that could eventually be outsourced to robots such as TidyBot, a project led by Stanford University computer scientist Jeannette Bohg.

IN THE FUTURE, A CAREGIVING MACHINE MIGHT GENTLY LIFT AN ELDERLY PERSON out of bed in the morning and help them get dressed. A cleaning bot could trundle through a child's room, picking up scattered objects, depositing toys on shelves and tucking away dirty laundry. And in a factory, mechanical hands may assemble a next-generation smartphone from its first fragile component to the finishing touch.

These are glimpses of a possible time when humans and robots will live and work side by side. Some of these machines already exist as prototypes, and some are still theoretical. In situations where people experience friction, inconvenience or wasted effort, engineers see opportunity—for robots to perform chores, do tasks we are unable to do or go places where we cannot.

Realizing such a future poses immense difficulties, however, not the least of which is us. Human beings are wild and unpredictable. Robots, beholden as they are to the rules of their programming, do not handle chaos well. Any robot collaborating or even coexisting with humans must be flexible. It must navigate messes and handle sudden changes in the environment. It must operate safely around excitable small children or delicate older people. Its limbs or manipulators must be sturdy, dexterous and attached to a stable body chassis that provides a source of power. And to truly become a part of our daily lives, these mechanical helpers will need to be affordable. All told, it's a steep challenge.

Ben Guarino is a freelance journalist with a soft spot for big ideas and tiny critters. He was formerly an associate technology editor at Scientific American.