So you remember those SciFi movies where there was a friendly home helper robot hovering around to make household chores a thing of the past? Well we’re getting there…slowly but surely.

The Famibot 5 is a new ‘multifunction home service robot‘ which does a slew of cool things to help you manage and coordinate your household tasks. The robot contains a camera, and because it’s WiFi and 3G enabled, this means you can use it to contact and view your home using a smartphone app and the Internet from wherever in the world you are at the time.

The product can also control your home appliances remotely, as long as they’re plugged into special controlled power sockets, and it also incorporates motion sensors and a smoke detector which is great for making sure your place isn’t being burgled or burnt down in your absence.

Finally the robot will not act as an air purifier, sucking in all those impurities and pushing out clean filtered air, but it can also play music, weather reports, stories or whatever at the touch of a button on the remote control or via your smartphone. Are you impressed yet?

We’re thinking this could be the start of a beautiful relationship, if only it could iron, cook and clean as well. But maybe we’re being a little too impatient? Apparently the developers, Ecovacs, intend to add medical treatment functionality to their range of home care robots in the future. We can’t wait.