A lengthy New York Times article by Robin Marantz Henig offers an overview of the state of real world robots to be found in research labs. She visits the robot labs of MIT to see Mertz, Kismet, Leo, and other social robots. She talks to Rodney Brooks about his "scientific midlife crisis". She mentions historical robots like Elktro and talks with Sherry Turkle about the danger of robot boyfriends. There is also a discussion of robot self-awareness, consiousness, and emotion in robots. About the only thing not covered in this article is transformers or other shape-shifting robots.