Robots of the future
So what direction will robots take in the future? Well, if the last twenty years is any indication, they won't be going too far. Asimo is definitely the direction they should be going though. The "toy" robots are a decent enough time diversion, but not really where home robots should be. They're actually a step back compared to H.E.R.O. and B.O.B. as they seem to specialize in only one feature, whereas the robots of the 80s combined the features of all the toy robots in one unit. Perhaps it's up to us, the home consumer to push the field to the next step with our Palm Pilot Robot Kits.

So is R. Daneel or Mr. Data in our future? I certainly hope so, but not any time soon. And since I don't have Asimo to do it for me, I'm going to have to get up and get that soda myself.

James Booth is a self-taught PC and Palm device user that dabbles in graphics and photography. He can be reached at lizardworks@mchsi.com.