Making robots see

Remember The Jetsons – the animated sitcom that reflected popular 1960s imaginings that technology had all the answers? Life, it envisaged, would continue much the way it had, but with our every whim served by platoons of sentient robots – dubious gender stereotypes aside. So, how did all that work out for us? "There is a fundamental disconnect between what we roboticists say and what the public perceives," says Ian Reid, deputy director of the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision, in Brisbane. Sure, we use robots for all sorts of things, but they aren't what fiction prepared us for – although the work of the centre is dedicated to turning that fiction into reality.