When Vasileios Tzoumas, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), visits a new city, he likes to explore by going for a run. And sometimes he gets lost. A few years ago, on a long run while in Osaka for a conference, the inevitable happened. But then Tzoumas spotted a 7-Eleven he remembered passing soon after leaving his hotel. This recognition allowed him to mentally "close the loop," to connect the loose end of his trajectory to someplace he knew and was sure about, thus solidifying his mental map and allowing him to make his way back to the hotel.

The key takeaway from Tuesday's RobotLabNYC forum, on "Exploring The Autonomous Future," was humans are the key to robot adoption. Howard Morgan of First Round Capital expressed to the audience of more than 100 innovators working within the automation ecosystem, the necessity of embracing "entrepreneurial marketing" to reach customers. Tom Ryden echoed Morgan's sentiment in his presentation about Mass Robotics, conveying his startups' frustrations with the pace of adoption. Dr. Eric Daimler, formerly of the Obama Administration, concluded the evening succinctly by exclaiming, "we only adopt what we trust." Trust is key for crossing the chasm.

In the not-so-distant future, we will begin entrusting to robotic systems such vital tasks as driving a car, performing surgery, and choosing when to apply lethal force in a war zone. As we describe in this report, ever more autonomous machines will present challenges spanning technical, regulatory, and even philosophical realms. They will force us to confront deep moral quandaries, and might even tweak our sense of who we are. If robots are going to drive our cars and play with our kids, we'll need to teach them right from wrong Here's how six of the coolest surgical robots are transforming the operating room Six month's worth of beta-testing is showing what works and what needs tweaking