The author proposes a research and business plan that, in about two years, would result in a "navigation head" able to guide factory vehicles in unfamiliar territory using a three-dimensional sense of the surroundings. By 2005, improvements might permit the first mass-market home utility robots, from specialised machines like fully automatic vacuum cleaners, to more capable ones able to manipulate objects as well as travel. Perhaps by 2010, these machines will evolve into "universal" robots that can be programmed for almost any task. The talk speculates on the subsequent capabilities of universal robots, paralleling evolution of biological intelligence, from lizard-like in 2010, to mouse-like in 2020 to monkey-like in 2030 to human-like in 2040.

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