It's 2006: Where's All the Cool Stuff?

Oct. 31, 2006 — -- We've come a long way since the Hoover, but don't throw away the dish gloves just yetFrom the Jetson's Rosie to Richie Rich's Irona to Robby of Forbidden Planet, we've been promised digital domestics that look and act a lot like...a maid. But that isn't going to happen anytime soon, robot experts say. The problem? Today's machines are a long way from having the anthropomorphic qualities--above all, sight--found in human help.

The problem once seemed solvable enough: Connect a camera to a computer, and bingo!--robot eye. But true perception is much tougher than it looks. "We're making progress," says Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, "but getting machines to replicate our ability to perceive and manipulate the world remains incredibly hard."

For now, the field of at-home robots isn't even close. Although the market for personal and service robots has nearly doubled since 2002, your Roomba [the robotic vaccum] isn't going to bake you cupcakes or wash your dishes.

Most likely to yield an automated housekeeper is radio-frequency identification (RFID), which would allow the robot to converse with inanimate objects. Working off a wireless network, it might approach a cold drink and transmit this kind of information:

Robot: Who are you? Drink: I'm a bottle of milk. This is how you pick me up. Robot: Anything else I should know? Drink: I expire in three weeks. Please recycle me when I'm finished.

Kevin Ashton, vice president of Thing-Magic.com, a leading RFID com-pany, says that instead of your spending hours cleaning up after a dinner party, a machine will take in the information provided by the pots and pans and put them where they "say" they need to be. "Combine this type of perception with robotics," he says, "and in the next 10 to 20 years we'll have our robot maid."

Scramjets can get us there--if we make a huge investment in the technologyNew York to Tokyo in less time than it takes to watch Kill Bill: Vol. 2? The question isn't if it will ever happen, but how soon.

The now-retired Concorde super-sonic jet cruised at Mach 2, or a little more than twice the speed of sound. At Mach 5 or better, you're flying in the realm of the "hypersonic." Scientists are optimistic that air-breathing engines called scramjets will make that leap and power the planes of the future. Scramjet planes boast rocketlike speed but are more efficient than rockets because they don't have to carry the oxidant needed to ignite their fuel. So where's the O2? Everywhere. Scramjets suck up oxygen from the atmosphere.In late 2004, the X-43A Hyper X, a 12-foot unmanned vehicle funded by NASA, ignited its scramjet engine and roared over the Pacific Ocean at Mach 9.6 (7,000 mph), the highest speed ever reached by an air-breathing vehicle. Although that flight lasted just 10 seconds and ended with a planned crash, there was no confusion: The tech works.