Your Robot Pal Is On Its Way

That's set to change in the next decade. While the service droids will stick around, toiling in their niches, the robots we bring home will be more versatile. They won't be vacuums--they'll use our vacuum cleaners, plus all our other appliances and tools, says Ian Bernstein, co-inventor of the popular Sphero toy robot ball and founder of a startup called Misty Robotics. "Eventually, we should go home and there should be a robot that's already prepared dinner and folded our laundry," Mr. Bernstein says. When we ask what a robot can do, we're really thinking, Can it climb stairs?