Flame, the robot of the Delft Biorobotics Lab of the (technical) university Delft, is not by nature stable, but like humans it constantly searches for balance. When it walks, for example, it needs both legs for stability. (tip: Heini Withagen of Mirabeau (Dutch))

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Tools became engines. Engines became like robots. Robots are becoming like people. Sooner or later we won’t be able to tell the difference and we’ll have buddies who do exactly as we say, whom we can laugh with, and who can provide us with good advice. What a pamper planet it’s going to be!

The animalistic robots in this video are inspired by nature.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We try to copy nature in various ways. In time this will lead to a series of minute robots in our homes. Think of microrobots that exterminate deadly spiders, fly after the wasps or kill ticks? It’s all coming.

Honda's robot Asimo has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

After the virtual world has been shaped and we’ve left traditional media such as the television, radio and telephone behind us, after 1 virtual world to which we can gain access from hundreds of different kinds of interface has been created, after 2020, we’ll slowly start emphasizing the physical world again. Very slowly physical robots will begin entering our lives. First as a gadget, but more and more as physical aids. For example, around the house, or for the elderly to help them walk. Developments like this robot are ahead of this.

A team from the university of Pennsylvania has developed a robot that can reassemble itself when it's in pieces. The different parts search for one another, recognize one another and reassemble.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In future these clusters will be perfected and mass-produced. At first they’ll be made for industrial or military robots that rebuild themselves into different structures, but soon after they’ll be made into objects for consumers. Think of key rings that find their way back to the car, telephones that transform themselves into the battery charger or the first aibo that you have to take for a walk. It’s a small step, but the potential is clearly present.

ApriPoko is a prototype living room robot who will operate all sorts of devices for you. ApriPoke receives the infrared signals from remote controls and uses a voice to ask for the action requested by the remote control. The user can give an answer such as "I turn the radio on" or "I mute the sound". The next time you want to mute the sound you ask ApriPoko and he does it for you (from pt). Our environment is becoming increasingly responsive to our behaviour, our movements and our voice. We are becoming more used to an environment that adapts its self to us. In the long term brands will be able to anticipate dialogues with us. This development is a step in that direction.

In this video you can see how a robot does some kind of dance with fighting movements.

We make robots more and more real. However, recognition of the world around them, and communication with people living in it, still is a challenge. Earlier or later these problems will be solved though, and then we will see robots on the street, at work, and even at home.

This robot has human-like muscles (fe). This in the end will lead to robots looking like humans, who take over all kinds of chores from us. Think of folding laundry, painting the house, cleaning the bathroom, putting away the groceries, and bringing coffee. Think thirty years ahead and we'll see a completely different world. A world in which brands come to life. Not just in virtual worlds, not just through brand agents, virtual personalities, but also through their robot colleagues. Maybe 'synthesized world' will be a better phrase then.

The 10 inches high, two-legged robot Runbot learns through trial and error. By just trying a different movement, the robot learns to adapt to new surroundings (ns). We keep developing artificial life. Through text in chat bots, in images through artificial avatars in virtual worlds, or in the physical world by building robots like these. In the end these robots will represent brands as well. They then won't just have a first name to address them, but also a family name: a brand name. This way the concept 'brand family' gets a totally different meaning. This will still take a long time, I would say about twenty years. The developments in this area go slow. In 1993 I did research for exactly this subject (I then called that 'stochastic learning'). Even so, there is constant progress. Earlier or later, robots will be all around us. This new finding adds to that development.

At Robocup 2006 there were soccer playing robots, expressing human gestures. When they scored for example, they went down on their knees, put their arms up in the air, or turned around in circles. We try to imitate human life more and more. In text, in sound, in image and also in the physical world we find human equivalents. Earlier or later humanoids, robots looking like people, will be important members of the brand culture. They will be direct colleagues of the brand agents, their virtual colleagues. And oh yes, there will also be real human beings working for the brand. These clumsy looking experiments form a small step in that direction.