Home Carpeting Robots Eye the Office Conquered

Home Carpeting Robots Eye the Office Conquered - The Roomba has conquered the home. No more vacuuming! Now robots must tackle mail delivery and coffee-making tasks in the office. Enter the coldly-named humanoid bot HRP-4. It doesn't surf the net. It doesn't gossip. It simply serves.

Starting January 28, the HRP-4 will begin to serve man by doing just that: Delivering mail, pouring coffee and even recognizing employee faces. Buy in cost? "Just" $350,000!

Initial customers will be research institutions and universities, both of which will probably be able to write off HRP-8's incredible cost as some kind of science experiment.