The gendering of robots is something I've found fascinating since I first started building robots out of legos with my brother. We all ascribe character to robots, consciously or not, even when we understand exactly how robots work. Until recently we've been able to write this off as science fiction stuff, because real robots were boring industrial arms and anything else was fictional. However, since 2010, robots have been rolling out into the real world in a whole range of shapes, characters and notably, stereotypes. My original research on the naming of robots gave some indications as to just how insidious this human tendency to anthropomorphize and gender robots really is.

Welcome to the world of delivery robots: one of the fastest-growing and most competitive markets in robotics. The idea behind these bots is simple: The customer orders an item, that item is loaded into or onto the robot, and then the robot travels to the customer to drop it off. But that's not stopped multiple intrepid companies from exploring their own innovative approaches to the challenge. Here are six of the biggest names to watch out for when it comes to delivery robots. With its Star Trek-sounding name, it's no surprise that Starship went boldly where no other robotics company has gone before; helping invent the modern delivery robot in the process.

Recently, I was walking in a little park in downtown Mountain View, right in the heart of Silicon Valley, when I saw something unexpected. They were little robots, well little "automated carts", really, with a flag on top and there were a few of them lined up near the library. Every now and then, one of them would leave the line and navigate the sidewalks and crosswalks of downtown. Being in what is essentially ground zero of Silicon Valley, I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised. When I moved to Mountain View in 2007, I remember being surprised at seeing Google's fleet of autonomous cars driving around (now called Waymo). This was a precursor to the boom in self-driving car companies that happened over the past decade, and which has yet not quite borne fruit.

Hotel bars are great places for people watching, seldom places for engaging conversation. I recently found myself sitting atop a tall stool in a city far from home, deep in conversation with a woman, like me, traveling for work. She, a hospitality professional in town to train a new cohort of hotel associates; me, in town for a tech conference. So, naturally, our conversation landed on the intersection of our specialities--the increasing use of technology in the hospitality industry. "I don't think the hospitality industry will become overtaken by technology--people want a human touch when they're traveling," I said confidently, and perhaps naively, to my newfound friend. She explained that, while in some places that's true (the closer to the water the more personal the experience needs to be, I learned), hotels are becoming more heavily outfitted with tech.

Book a night at LAX's Residence Inn and you may be fortunate enough to meet an employee named Wally. His gig is relatively pedestrian--bring you room service, navigate around the hotel's clientele in the lobby and halls--but Wally's life is far more difficult than it seems. If you put a tray out in front of your door, for instance, he can't get to you. If a cart is blocking the hall, he can't push it out of the way. But fortunately for Wally, whenever he gets into a spot of trouble, he can call out for help.

Last year at CES, LG introduced a bunch of new robots because, as near as we could tell, LG figured that robots were cool so they'd better make some robots or something. The most photogenic (and smallest) was Hub, which bore a striking resemblance to Jibo, but we also met two burly service robots designed to work at airports. For CES 2018, LG is adding three more robots to the CLOi (that's pronounced KLOH-ee, obviously) family. New this year are the Serving Robot, Porter Robot, and Shopping Cart Robot, "developed for commercial use at hotels, airports, and supermarkets," and it's definitely not a coincidence that they're just in time for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, where LG is also based. The purpose of the Serving Robot is to deliver meals and drinks to guests and customers at hotels and airport lounges quickly and efficiently. The robot can deliver food or refreshments around the clock and with its built-in sliding tray, present the tray to the customer for easy removal.

The idea of putting robots to work in hotels started as a novelty, but is slowly gaining acceptance throughout the industry. A boutique hotel that opened this month near Los Angeles International Airport has already put two robots to work while a 288-room hotel in San Gabriel plans to employ eight robots when it opens in January. The latest automated additions come a year after a Santa Clara, Calif., company called Savioke put 12 robots in hotels across the country, including one named Wally at the Residence Inn by Marriott near LAX. So far, the tasks reserved for the water-cooler shaped automatons are simple: When guests call down to the front lobby for linen, luggage or food, the robots will be deployed to roll into an elevator and up to the room to make the deliveries. "Robots are the next wave of hospitality technology and we believe our overnight guests and those in the local San Gabriel community will find the robots to be intriguing and fun," said Wanda Chan, general manager of the Sheraton Los Angeles San Gabriel.

Recent events demonstrate the growing presence of indoor mobile robots: (1) Savioke's hotel butler robot won the 2017 IERA inventors award; (2) Knightscope's security robot mistook a reflecting pond for a solid floor and dove in face-first to the delight of Twitterdom and the media; and (3) the sale of robotic hospital delivery provider Aethon to a Singaporean conglomerate. Travis Deyle, CEO of Silicon Valley startup Cobalt Robotics which is developing indoor robots for security purposes, in an article in IEEE Spectrum, posited that commercial spaces are the next big marketplace for robotics and that there's a massive, untapped market in each of the commercial spaces shown in his chart below: "Commercial spaces could serve as a great stepping stone on the path toward general-purpose home robots by driving scale, volume, and capabilities. The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (IEEE/RAS) jointly sponsor an annual IERA (Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation) Award which this year was presented to the Relay butler robot made by Savioke, a Silicon Valley startup. Listed below are a few of the companies in the emerging mobile robot indoor commercial marketplaces described in Deyle's chart above.

IN A recent blog post, Gulliver expressed his exasperation at having to interact with other humans when he stayed at hotels. After all, in the age of mobile check-in and automated bartenders, it must be possible to swerve most of these pointless encounters (and avoid having to hand over tips for the most mundane services, such as pouring a beer or being shown to your room). One solution that didn't occur to him was robot butlers. The M Social Singapore hotel is introducing a droid that can deliver room service to guests. It navigates using 3D cameras and can negotiate lifts and manoeuvre around people wandering down the corridors.

The future of room service has arrived, with a number of hotels are now giving the job to robots instead of humans. The Crowne Plaza San Jose-Silicon Valley hotel and the Aloft Hotels brand of Starwood Hotels are utilising androids in the hospitality sector, both created by Savioke. Dash is the latest addition to the Crowne Plaza brand, that is owned by Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG). It stands 3ft-tall and weighs less than 100lbs. Dash is the latest addition to the Crowne Plaza workforce as it tends to customers' needs The robot can navigate between floors travelling at the same speed as a human, and can even call the lift using a special Wi-Fi sensor.