Mass Utility Robots this Decade, Finally! Hans P. Moravec Principal Research Scientist Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University Abstract: Freely-roaming robots that fetch, clean, guard and do other chores have been an elusive fantasy for decades. Industrial mobile robots today have a very limited market because they work only on expensively prearranged routes. Hundredfold increases in onboard computer power in the 1990s finally allowed research robots to map their own routes, and prowl research building hallways and offices daylong. Industrial applications require trouble-free months, which can probably be achieved by replacing the 2D maps in the present research machines with hundredfold-richer 3D versions - the author's main work. The likely first product within three years will be a basketball-sized camera-studded "navigation head" to be retrofitted to existing industrial transport and cleaning machines, that lets them operate autonomously in new locations simply designated. The follow-on business plan anticipates a growing industrial market to support the development of mass-market products, starting with small specialized automatic home vacuum cleaners around 2005, followed by more capable home utility robots able to manipulate objects as well as travel, and, sometime after 2010, a first generation of broadly-capable "universal robots" able to run application programs for many simple chores. These machines will have mental power and inflexible behavior analogous to small reptiles. Following decades will see an evolution through mammallike learning, primatelike imagination and humanlike abstraction. By mid-century no human task, physical or intellectual, should be beyond effective automation.