That's a great interview. Thomas Burick evangelises robotics probably in a similar way that Bill Gates did with PCs 25 years ago. I think over the next 5 years there will be some interesting developments.

Eventually I'd like to get one of the PC-Bots and develop a stereo vision system for it. This is something which could be done at very low cost, and would give the robot a complete 3D perception and mapping ability. The stuff I've already done with occupancy grids is enough to convince me that it can be done.

we need a hack to give one of those Buricks arms and legs. I reckon you would some serious hardware there if you did.