Its going to be interesting to see how society deals with artificial intelligence, but it will definitely be cool.

The reason it has taken so long for the robotics industry to move forward is because people keep trying to make something that is cool but difficult to achieve rather than trying to find solutions to actual human problems. Technology can be extremely expensive if you don't focus.

Building robot versions of people is very expensive.

I believe one day nano-robots will play an important role in medicine.

When we built Roomba, we explicitly designed it to not have a face. We didn't want to think it was cute, we wanted people to take it seriously so we gave it more of an industrial look. People personified their Roomba anyway. Over 80 percent of people name their robot. We did nothing to encourage people to do that but they do it anyway.

The answer is navigation, manipulation, and implementation of more sophisticated intelligence. The idea that a robot will become more aware of its environment, that telling it to "go to the kitchen" means something - navigation and understanding of the environment is a robot problem. Those are the technological frontiers of the robotics industry.

My very clear vision for the ideal Roomba is one you never see and you never touch. Our research priorities are explicitly focused on the Roomba of the future that will deliver on the promise of automatically cleaning your floor.