Table of Contents Chapter 1 HARD AT WORK 4 Chapter 2 TEACHERS AND CAREGIVERS 11 Chapter 3 MAKING FRIENDS WITH ROBOTS 17 Chapter 4 WHAT'S NEXT 23 Glossary 30 Index 31
4 Chapter 1 HARD AT WORK The house is clean The laundry is done Dinner is on the table And no one lifted a finger to make it happen That might be hard to imagine But someday robots might take over these chores These machines are built to perform specific tasks Robots that work in the home are called domestic robots Getting the Job Done For many years scientists have been designing and building domestic robots In the 1980s hobbyists
built HERO robots from a kit One model the Hero Jr. could sing songs recite nursery rhymes and wake a person up at a certain time In the late 1990s children were introduced to Furby a fuzzy robotic toy with its own language Furby robots came in many colors 5
