A group at Stanford University has been working on the problem of creating robots that can peform everyday tasks. Among the tasks they've selected are cleaning up after a dinner party, "fetching a person or object from an office upon verbal request, showing guests around a dynamic environment and assembling an IKEA bookshelf using multiple tools". The first task involves some seemingly simple problems such as finding the dirty dishes left over from the dinner party, picking them up, and placing them in the dishwasher. The group of 10 professors and 30 students have solved a small part of that problem. They've created software that allows a robot to examine an unfamiliar object and determine how to pick it up. They expect it make take another decade to produce a consumer-ready robot that does the job. For more details see the Stanford AI Robot (STAIR) project website.