Our friend the robot

Whenever I think of the future of robotics, what comes to mind is the image of a lady in her comfortable home in her unspecified city. She is quietly preparing a cake for a dinner that is coming up soon and is mixing the ingredients according to the recipe. This is not an unusual scene—rather it is both traditional and universal. It can take place in different parts of the planet, regardless of places and cultures. If we approach and observe well, however, we discover that the lady is not following a recipe book as my grandmother would have done, or a television program, as my mother would do today, or even using a smartphone with a trendy app, as my daughter normally does. On the contrary, the lady is talking with a kind of one-eyed table-top robotic lamp, whose head swivels, responds and follows the movements of her hands, measures the quantities of the ingredients, and corrects or suggests the actions to be carried out—how to mix, how to add more. It even praises or softly scolds if too many utensils are dirtied.