Research at Cornell has made the first steps in evolutionary robotics. Their robot successfully make copies itself without any human interaction.

The next step is to train the robots to optimize themselves while reconstructing. Their research concentrates on how life adapts, evolution, and replicating these concepts in robots.

The Motley Fool has an interesting interview with long-term forecaster Paul Saffo of the Institute of the Future entitled, New Year’s 2016: I, Robot Investor. About half way through, the following text finally becomes of interest:

To me, it is pretty clear what the next big, out-of-the-blue industry will be. And it will continue the pattern of a new industry emerging every decade or so. In the ’80s, it was the personal computer… Now we are teetering right on the edge of a revolution in the robotics industry – consumer robotics in particular.

His job is to watch for the type of disruption recently caused by iRobot and Intuitive Surgical. “60% of Roomba owners had given their Roombas names.” He also mentions iRobot is delivering an ‘advanced’ product at a reasonable price, a sign robots are becoming practical.

In my opinion, this is not extremely out of the ordinary. What percentage of Roomba owning geeks has a name for their car or computer? I am sure it is very far above the national average. From an engineering standpoint, the price of the Roomba is a function of its simplicity, not price drops at a warehouse or research and development.

Although I am skeptical, I do believe that robotics is where the mp3 player was 6 years ago. The field is just waiting for something the general public will go googly eyed over.

Opinions?