It's hard to imagine anything less personable than a vacuum cleaner--until you give it a mind of its own. Almost as soon as iRobot released the Roomba into the world, a community of autonomous vacuum enthusiasts started giving their Roombas names, backstories, and custom wardrobes. One of the company's early TV ads acknowledged this unlikely bond, featuring people talking about their Roomba like it was a person. It's a big emotional investment in a tool whose sole purpose is to suck up filth, but Paolo Pirjanian, former CTO of iRobot, totally gets it. "There's something innate in our mind that triggers when you see something move on its own," says Pirjanian.

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?