But the robotic rush in Japan is also being driven by unique societal needs. Confronting a major depopulation problem due to a record low birthrate and its status as the nation with the longest lifespan on Earth, Japanese are fretting about who will staff the factory floors of the world's second-largest economy in the years ahead. Toyota, Japan's biggest car maker, has come up with one answer in moving to create a line of worker robots with human-like hands able to perform multiple sophisticated tasks.

Fremont resident Rakesh Guliani likes to say that a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner saved his marriage. Messy floors had been causing friction, says the 41-year-old Guliani (pronounced Goo-liani). His wife, Kavita, 35, was particularly annoyed by the footprints he and their daughters, Ashna, 10, and Rhea, 6, tended to track through the house. "I am soccer coach to both of them, and when we come in with our dirty cleats, I am more tolerant of that because I am tracking dirt, too," says Guliani, vice president of the job-placement firm Park Computer Systems. He vacuumed several times a week but it never seemed enough to satisfy his wife, a technical writer for Google.

Most of us only dream about a robot that will pick up pizza boxes and assemble furniture, but Andrew Ng, an assistant computer science professor at Stanford, is building one. Leader of the STair -- or Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot -- project, Ng, 30, believes every home eventually will have one. There are four concrete challenges: to have the robot able to clean up after a dinner party, clear the table, load the dishwasher; be able to fetch items from around the office or home; to assemble an Ikea bookshelf; and to give a tour of this research lab. Within a decade we would like to develop the technology. A year ago I said 15 years.

During a recent product demonstration at SRI headquarters in Menlo Park, computer scientist Harry Bratt spoke into the microphone of his lab's new translation computer: "Did you hear the explosion this morning?" The recording demonstrates how the computer translates English into the Iraqi dialect of Arabic. Also, CNET reviews video cams and David Einstein has advise on digital cameras.] Several seconds later, software written by SRI International scientists piped the question through the computer's speaker -- this time in the Iraqi dialect of Arabic. Saad Alabbodi, an Iraqi immigrant posing as a civilian being questioned by a U.S. soldier, answered in his native tongue. There was another pause as the computer translated Alabbodi's reply into English in a mock interrogation that provided another example of how technology is slowly mimicking complex human capabilities such as speech.

A British fighter jet was returning to its base in Kuwait after a mission on the third day of the 2003 Iraq War when a U.S. anti-missile system spotted it, identified it as an enemy missile, and fired. The two men in the plane were both killed. A week and a half later, the same system--the vaunted Patriot--made the same mistake. This time, it was an American plane downed, and an American pilot killed. The missile battery that targeted the two jets was almost entirely automated.

Between bouts of eating this Thanksgiving weekend you might want to head outside and toss a football, shoot some hoops or kick a soccer ball around to get a little exercise. If the weather's nasty (or if you live in Buffalo) perhaps Ping Pong or a game of pool will do. Can't get any people in your house off the couch? Of course "a robot that plays soccer" could mean anything from a little cube 15 centimeters high that pushes a tiny ball on a tabletop field, to supersize automatons. For holiday fun I've collected videos of humanoids as well as nonhuman-like contraptions that play a real game on a real surface--with a little latitude for "real."

During the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, which took place here June 5 and 6, the winning team's DRC-HUBO robot finished all eight tasks in less than 45 minutes. The winning bot had a humanoid design that could transform itself into a wheeled kneeling position for faster, more stable movement. The Running Man robot from Florida's Institute for Human and Machine Cognition claimed second, finishing all the tasks in just over 50 minutes. Team Tartan Rescue's CHIMP robot came in third, completing all the tasks in just over 55 minutes. The second and third place teams took home $1 million and $500,000, respectively.

Mobile devices have become incredibly popular for their ability to weave modern conveniences such as Internet access and social networking into the fabric of daily life. For people with disabilities, however, these devices have the potential to unlock unprecedented new possibilities for communication, navigation and independence. This emergence of mobile "assistive" technologies, influenced heavily by the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 25 years ago, marks a major step forward for people with disabilities. The U.S. Congress passed the ADA in July 1990 as a civil rights law to protect people with disabilities from discrimination. The act requires that businesses, schools and government agencies must follow certain requirements to ensure people have equal access to their services and facilities.

The word "drone", a short term for an unmanned aerial vehicle, usually conjures up images of a menacing machine that spies and shoots from on high. However, over the past three years, a new generation of drones has emerged to address civilian and humanitarian needs, from surveying disaster zones to delivering aid. In the future, friendly drones could even whisk commuters above congested streets or haul cargo across Africa – if a desperate lack of legislation is addressed. Rapid progress in two key technological areas lies behind this new wave of friendly drones. On the one hand, essential parts including batteries and sensors have become smaller and cheaper, largely because of progress in commercial electronic devices.

What does 2011 hold for the field of robotics? Plenty, if 2010 is any indication. This will not be the year that mobile, artificially intelligent robot nurses assume the responsibility of caring for the world's growing elderly population, but it does promise to be a pivotal time for the development of the underlying technology that will enable safe and reliable automated elder care, not to mention other services that robots are expected to perform in the coming decade. Thanks to a standardized platform introduced in 2010, roboticists can now collaborate as never before. Last May, Willow Garage, a Menlo Park, Calif., maker of robot hardware and software, released a test version of its personal robot platform.