If you've been to the RoboGames, you've seen everything from flame-throwing battlebots to androids that play soccer. But robo-athletes are more than just performers. Researchers at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology have built a small humanoid robot that plays baseball -- or something like it. The bot can hold a fan-like bat and take swings at flying plastic balls, and though it may miss at first, it can learn with each new pitch and adjust its swing accordingly. Eventually, it will make contact. The robot, you see, is also equipped with an artificial brain.

I remember watching TV shows such as "The Jetsons" when I was a child and fantasizing about the possibilities of living with a robot, riding in a flying car, or having food instantly show up warm and ready whenever I wanted it. Fast forward a couple decades later, and it turns out that we are now on the brink of a Jetsons-like reality. Robotics companies are popping up all around the world, enabling humans to program objects with artificial intelligence to do mundane tasks for them, ranging from mopping the floors to answering doors. Startups like Terrafugia are creating flying cars that can convert from driving mode to flying mode in under a minute. And food creation is evolving to the point where our refrigerators know exactly what is inside of them and can even conjure up recipes using the ingredients you have on hand.

Listen to this three-piece with your eyes closed and it could be any group of musicians plucking a guitar, twinkling on an electric keyboard, or beating a drum. Sure, there's a synthesized quality to the music -- which sweeps from orchestral to experimental rock -- but what band doesn't get a little help from computers these days? Open your eyes and you'll find something very different indeed. For starters, the guitarist is a humanoid looming two-meters-tall, with 78 fingers sweeping across the glowing instrument strapped to its torso. The rocking robot -- called March -- bangs its impressive mane of multi-colored cables in time to the music, albeit a little jerkily.

Whether we are commuting to work, flying to business meetings or watching as human explorers venture out into space, human activity is relentless. In a world that is constantly in motion, what does the future hold? Will you be able to spend a week aboard a space hotel as inexpensively as you would take a cruise? Will you be able to fly from Tokyo to New York in less than three hours? These are some of the questions that CNN Future Summit: World in Motion will explore when it airs on the CNN International network.

A professor of musical technology at Georgia Tech, Gil Weinberg, enlisted the support of graduate student Scott Driscoll to create Haile -- the first truly robotic musician. In this way, he became a sort of Geppetto creating his musical Pinocchio. "Computers have been playing music for 50 years," Driscoll said. "But we wanted to create something that didn't just play back what it heard, but play off it, too." Think of Haile (pronounced Hi-lee) as a robotic partner in the percussion form of dueling banjos.

Top 10 predictions In the 21st century, I bet the following 10 things happening: 1) Man/Women walking on Mars. As is currently happening in India and southeast Asia and with the advent of cheap labor and nearly free energy (Africa's desert is a prime location for solar power). It will surely attract hefty amounts of foreign investment 4) Genetic and Stem Cell research collide and make discovery's that lead to cures for almost all genetic disorders. It'll be like INTERPOL on steriods and very little red tape. Their capabilities powers will broaden with every terrorist attack.

Go ahead and try to hide how you're feeling. Your keystrokes could rat you out. Researchers in Bangladesh have designed a computer program that analyzes typing and text patterns to identify emotional states. While both methods have been used before to detect computer users' emotions, the researchers combined them, for the first time, they say, and saw promising results -- software that nails mood as much as 87 percent of the time. They say the findings could be significant to the development of emotionally aware computer systems as their approach relies on less expensive, and less intrusive, methods than tools like voice analysis, facial sensors, thermal imaging, and gesture tracking.

The "communication android", as Toshiba is calling its creation, was unveiled this week at the Cutting-Edge IT & Electronics Comprehensive Exhibition (CEATEC), Japan, and has been designed for a maximum of movement fluidity in its hands and arms, employing 43 actuators in its joints, in order to speak in Japanese sign language. At this point, its range is fairly limited: it can mimic simple movements, such as greetings, but the company has plans to develop the robot -- named Aiko Chihira -- into a full communications robot by 2020. This will include speech synthesis, speech recognition, robotic control and other sensors. The end goal, the company said, is a robot that can serve as a "companion for the elderly and people with dementia, to offer telecounseling in natural speech, communicate through sign language and allow healthcare workers or family members to keep an eye on elderly people." If the robot looks familiar, that's because it was developed in collaboration with Osaka University, which has been developing humanoid robots for some time.

Earlier this year, Japanese company Softbank brought the world Pepper, a humanoid robot that has sold out in a minute each time it's gone on sale. Now, MJI Robotics, another Japanese robotics firm, is introducing a smaller, more accessible companion. Demonstrated at this year's International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, the MJI (More Joyful Innovation) Communication Robot is an egg-shaped desktop device that communicates through a 5-inch screen. The screen shows the companion's emotive eyes as a default, but also serves as a display for photos, weather, news and other information. Set for a release of early 2016, the MJI Robot also has built-in telephone functionality.

It can get lonely in space, even for a robot. Kirobo, the Japanese humanoid robot who is modeled after Astro Boy, was developed to entertain astronauts in space. But now that the robot's trip home has been delayed, it seems Kirobo is finding his stay at the International Space Station rather desolate. Created by robot designer Tomotaka Takahashi, the Kirobo robot has a special mission "to help solve the problems brought about by a society that has become more individualized and less communicative," according to the Kibo Robot Project website. "Nowadays, more and more people are living alone. With a new style of robot-human interface, perhaps a way to solve this problem could be found. This is the goal we have in mind for this project."