See Mitsubishi’s $14,000 little Wakamaru household robot. Trouble is, it is not handy with anything – it cannot clean, it cannot cook, it cannot converse, it cannot handle stairs. It can deliver your email and a weather forecast. And it didn’t sell? Imagine that!

Or, maybe, robots should look like crosses between alien abductors and cute little duckies, and serve as receptionists. At $1000 a day, that’s a pretty expensive receptionist. $25,000 a year is a little more reasonable, but here in the good ol’ US, anyways, one can easily get a receptionist for that much or less, with no maintenance fees. These little buggers are a little over 3 feet tall and 66 pounds, or about the size of my son–who probably has a better vocabulary. I’m sure, as usual, these are proofs-of-concept, but still, I want my robots to look more like Transformers than Donald the Duck from Alpha Prime.