It’s not going to be long now before we see fully equipped, quasi intelligent robots doing stuff that we used to do. Things that are boring or routine are already done by our robotic friends, like factory and security work, but the ongoing miniaturization means this is going to continue apace.

Take this Baxter Research Robot for example. Designed to work in a research lab, it comes with two very flexible arms, with hand attachment options, as well as a bunch of software support so you can basically set it up to do fairly complex things on your way to earning that Nobel.

The key feature is the fact that Baxter only costs around 22,000 Euros, which makes it much cheaper than a research assistant. And probably more fun. It features two cameras in the wrist, and one on the head mounted display, and it runs the open source ROS operating system so it can be easily programmed for your tasks. We’re now waiting for Baxter The Teaching Professor, at which point all bets will be off.

The video below is so uncannily like a Hollywood horror robot movies (you know the one where they play the cheesy robot advert just before the robots start rampaging across the country killing everyone?) that we’re not sure we should even be featuring the product at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2-4WFr9-X0