The Robots Are Coming!

ByABC News
July 18, 2005, 12:52 PM

July 19, 2005 -- -- For those of us begrudgingly driving our non-flying cars to work every day and being forced to take vacations in the Bahamas rather than on the moon, you may feel like science has let you down.

But fear not, because in a move that will certainly redeem the scientific community, leaps and bounds are being made in the world of domestic robots.

Not enough time to get all of your chores done? Need some help taking care of the kids for a few hours? Do you just want someone to listen?

Thanks to robotic vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers and companions, some companies are making sure that while we wait for our personal, nuclear-powered jet packs, we can at least get a Jetsons-style robot to take out the trash.

Whether you realize it or not, robots are everywhere.

They build the cars that we drive and the computers we work on, they fight terrorists overseas and dispose of bombs, placing their own metal frames at risk while humans watch safely from a distance.

Though robots have long had a place in manufacturing and the military, they've only just begun creeping into our homes to play maid, gardener and pool boy.

"It's a relatively new market I think since about 2002, at least for consumer products," said Nancy Dussault, global marketing director for iRobot, makers of the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner.

When the company launched the saucer-shaped machine, puzzled consumers often didn't know what it was. Some thought it was a scale, Dussault said. But now she notes there are over 1.2 million Roombas out there.

"A lot of it has to do with the right product, at the right time, at the right price," she said. "When you look at Roomba, it satisfied a need -- it vacuums and it does a very good job of it -- and it did it at a price point that people were comfortable taking a chance on it."