The Jetsons are coming, just not yet

Looking for a robot that will clean your house and take care of the kids? It’s not going to happen anytime soon according to Tandy Trower, General Manager of Microsoft.

Trower, the founder of Microsoft’s robotics initiative, told a crowd of RoboBusiness Conference attendees this morning at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.

“We have a lot of work to do in this area,” said Trower.

While there are great innovations in the robotics field, Trower said that many of these advances are still locked away in university labs and libraries.

Among the challenges on the docket before we see nanny robots running around Beacon Hill or Davis Square, are navigation advances, battery and wireless improvements, amazing dexterity and of course, affordability.

But Trower wanted to be clear that we are seeing a greater proliferation of robots in our lives, even if they aren’t what we have seen on the Sci-Fi Channel.

“The reality is that in very subtle ways they’ve already begun to creep into our lives,” he said.

And it’s not just here in Massachusetts or in the United States. “It’s going on around the world,” he said.

“The reality is that in very subtle ways,” said Trower. “They’ve already begun to creep into our lives.”

He mentioned the Kiva robots that Zappo’s uses to move merchandise around its warehouses and the robotic technology that’s already being used in healthcare.

Robots are already in our cars and toys and cleaning tools and Trower said we are going to see them arrive in even more advanced forms. Just not today or next year or even in a handful of years.

But the robots are coming, he insisted. And the potential of what we might see is unlimited.

The RoboBusiness Conference is in its 6th year and runs through tomorrow at the Hynes Conference and Expo Center.