Before we begin, a disclaimer. Writing an article about whether or not domestic robots will have a part to play in the coming years is a little like writing a think-piece about the possible ubiquity of PCs in the late 1980s: the horse has bolted.

The robots are already among us. If we can all agree on a few basic truths – namely that washing machines and dishwashers feature (loosely) on the robotic spectrum and yes, you can buy a robotic vacuum cleaner today in any department store – we’ll get off to a better start.

But just as consumers in the 1950s and 60s were faced with the prospect of shiny and exciting labour-saving appliances becoming a part of their lives, there is little doubt that we are starting to see the emergence of a myriad rather more 21st century machines that have the potential to make our homes more interesting and chore-free.

Already there are robot lawnmowers and pool cleaners, an assortment of amusing but not very useful humanoid machines, intelligent kitchen appliances and a raft of other ‘smart’ devices such as thermostats and lighting controllers that enable users to stay in control even when they are not at home. Fast-forward a couple of decades and someone exactly like Red Dwarf’s Kryten or Bishop from the Alien movie will surely be our new best friend.

Dr Kathleen Richardson, senior research fellow in the ethics of robotics at De Montfort University, isn’t so sure. “I see robots as machines,” she says. “Just like computers or cars or aeroplanes, and they provide a service to help people do what they need to get done. The moment we start imagining that machines can play emotional roles for other humans, that’s when I have a problem.”

The early days

More of this in a while, but first a brief history lesson to bring us up to speed.

The idea of an all-singing, all-dancing robot is widely thought to have first been introduced into the public consciousness when Czech writer Karel Čapek wrote a play about them in 1921. Entitled R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), it was brilliantly ahead of its time and its story was centred around a factory that churns out artificial people who can think for themselves.

In the 1920s this was pretty out-there stuff, and naturally led to countless pieces of fiction that expanded on the general idea. Čapek has indirectly helped Hollywood bank billions. Whilst it quickly became obvious that an automated butler wasn’t going to show up on our doorstep any time soon, robots – of a sort – did start appearing on production lines in the early 1960s, first at General Motors and soon after all over the world.

Whilst first-rate at dipping car doors in paint or rapidly applying screws to the back of a fridge-freezer, these robots were a long way removed from what people had been anticipating, so science fiction once again took the mantle and children growing up in the 1980s and 90s would have been forgiven for thinking that a useful metallic buddy was only a couple of Christmases away.

Just to be clear – it is not. The idea that we will one day have a battery-powered valet cooking for us, rocking the baby and cleaning the house is nonetheless hard to shake off.

Desire and reality

Noted futurist Dr Ian Pearson agrees that this image probably represents the ‘holy grail’ of what we want out of a domestic robot.

“What people dream of is not a bunch of smaller devices but one larger machine that does everything,” he says. “People want some kind of C3PO android that can run around doing all sorts of tasks, but what we’re likely to get in the short term is a collection of smaller robots.”

Standing between what we desire and what’s available, he says, are cost, mechanical technology and computer science. Pearson actually thinks the last bit is the easiest part to fathom and that it is the fluid, physical movements that we want from robots that is proving to be a bigger challenge.

You walk in from work and tell it you want a take-away and it says, ‘Do you want pizza?’

Or, as Richardson puts it: “Even getting a robot to mop the floor would be an amazing technical feat.” To prove her point, Richardson points to Honda’s Asimo, the current benchmark for where robotic science stands and available to buy at prices whispered to be anywhere between $1m and $2.5m. While admittedly pretty impressive, this clunking metal ‘boy’ is still a long way short of the labour-saving dogsbody that anyone would really want in their home.

“What they don’t tell you with Asimo is that there’s an army of technicians behind the scenes,” says Richardson. “I went to a performance – and it is a performance – by Asimo, and basically they had to do all these markings on the floor. They have to perfectly choreograph the whole event so that the vision system can locate everything in that environment and if anything’s slightly off that robot will fall.”

Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, thinks he’s spotted what might be a compromise between what we want and what we can actually have. It’s a robot called Jibo, and it will be available to buy for around $500 before the end of this year.

“Jibo is a very interesting device,” says Sharkey. “It doesn’t wander around, but it does move a bit and uses what we call anthropomorphism – the way we attribute human-like qualities to a machine.”

Jibo, as many people now know, is a cute little figure reminiscent of EVE from the film Wall-E that comes with a range of ‘facial expressions’ and is being billed as the world’s first social robot for the home. It can take your family photos, tell you when you get emails, read stories to the kids and a lot more.

“It’s like a little companion,” says Sharkey. “You walk in from work and tell it you want a take-away and it says, ‘Do you want pizza? It’s your favourite food and you’ve not had it all week.’”

Great expectations

Sharkey thinks that Jibo may prove to be a “gateway to the future” in that it will get people away from the idea that they need to be glued to a keyboard to interact with computers. He won’t, however, be drawn on when we might add legs to a tenth generation Jibo and have it zipping around our home.

“Most homes just aren’t built for robots,” he points out. “They’d be falling over all the time.”

The coming decades will see a rush of robotic products coming to the market

Luckily, Pearson is a little more liberal with his predictions. He estimates that we’ll have a metallic personal robot by the late 2030s or 2040s, and something more akin to a fleshy humanoid – and just as smart as a real person – around the middle of this century.

The coming decades will see a rush of robotic products coming to the market. Pearson believes that within the next three years we will likely see the launch of a half-decent robotic pet, and that something akin to Asimo but a lot more affordable will be on the shelves in about a decade. Around the same time, he says, there will be a significant uptake in robotic cleaners and mowers as they become better and cheaper.

Sharkey, however, thinks the rise of the machines may happen in a slightly different way, suggesting that appliances themselves will come with robotic elements built in. “The Internet of Things is definitely coming,” he points out.

The hurdles to mainstream

But will domestic robots do what they are, surely, intended to do and give us more time? Not according to Pearson – at least not in the next decade, when he predicts they will need so much tinkering and programming and maintenance that you’ll be lucky to gain a few minutes.

How about caring for us? Will robots look after us when we’re ill and feed us when we’re old? “There are robots that do this in Japan already,” says Sharkey, explaining that the country has such a large percentage of elderly inhabitants that the government has been forced to look for a solution, throwing technology – and untold millions – at the problem.

“There are hair-washing robots with fingers to wash your hair and massage your head,” he says, “there are feeding robots which will spoon-feed you your lunch. One of my favourites is a bed that you tell to fold when it wakes up and it turns into a wheelchair. But it’s all incredibly expensive. It’s not the case that the technology isn’t there; the problem is that the wretched cost is so high.”

It’s not the case that the technology isn’t there; the problem is that the wretched cost is so high

As for the suggestion that robots will make us all bone idle, Sharkey offers an alternative viewpoint – we’ll just be able to wave bye-bye to the dull stuff. He points to the success that researchers at Berkeley University in California have had with their PR2 system which finds dirty laundry in your room, washes and dries it and then folds it. “It’s still incredibly slow at the moment,” he says, explaining that it takes about 20 minutes to fold a towel. Will it ever make it to market? It all depends on the price.

“It’s kind of a vicious circle,” says Sharkey. “People know that things will be superceded. When you buy a robot you don’t want to spent ten thousand pounds on something that will be obsolete in three years, yet the only way to make these things cheaper is to get them into the market and then prices will fall.”

He thinks that the launch of Jibo and its attractive price point might help to speed this process up.

Being realistic

There is, of course, the chance that very little of the above will happen. Sharkey posits hackers, security issues and gadget fatigue as possible reasons why we might not want a multitude of robots in the home.

In a more cheerful scenario, however, one in which Pearson’s pally humanoid is hanging around in the living room – what will that mean to the family? Will it change the way we interact in the home? Pearson believes it will.

“By the time they become useful, robots will also have access to very large amounts of artificial intelligence and that will make them among your friends,” he says. “They will have a personality that you will interact with, so it will change the nature of your family and it will extend your family, too.”

Richardson, however, takes it all with a pinch of salt. “You’ve only to go into a robotics lab and you’ll see what it’s really like on the ground,” she says. “Most robots are not turned on all the time, and while they can detect the colours or shapes of an object, it might take them three hours.”

She thinks, in fact, that people often believe quite ridiculous statements about robots’ potential. “It’s a lot of people convincing a lot of other people that AI is the next big thing because they want investment,” she says.

To set the record straight, though, Richardson is excited by technology. She agrees that AI could be “amazing” – she just thinks it’s important not to get carried away. “When people phone their bank and get through to an automated service, that is AI,” she says. “If you think your banking service is a conscious entity, then maybe that’s enough for you. I don’t think that. I’m quite impressed by human beings.”