Robots are interesting because they exist as a real technology that you can really study - you can get a degree in robotics - and they also have all this pop-culture real estate that they take up in people's minds.

People don't want to believe that technology is broken. Pharmaceuticals robotics artificial intelligence nanotechnology - all these areas where the progress has been a lot more limited than people think. And the question is why.

Sometimes a technology is so awe-inspiring that the imagination runs away with it - often far far away from reality. Robots are like that. A lot of big and ultimately unfulfilled promises were made in robotics early on based on preliminary successes.