Missed it, huh?

If you missed our webcast on Consumer Robotics 2016, here?s a second chance to get ahead of the crowd.

Consumer Robotics 2016 webcast
Sweet Sixteen for 2016 personal robots catalog (59 pages)
Consumer Preferences Survey for Personal Robotics (8-page survey summary)

A packed house for the webcast

Our largest audience of the year sidled up to their laptops and slipped on their earphones for an hour of what?s up in the nascent world of personal robotics.

As we found out real soon, the world is sure interested in these diminutive but brainy home pals: 43 countries, 6 continents and all 12 time zones were aboard in quantity.

Get ready, strap yourself in because the coming personal robot craze is about to blast off was the webcasts overarching message.

The webcast agenda:

• So much more than vacuums: “Consumer Robotics 2016”
• Personal-home-social-family robots: The age of shared living with a robot has begun
• Eavesdropping on Marketplace Tech’s Molly Wood and Ben Johnson
• ?Honey, the voice in the living room ain’t human?
• Hacking Barbie: Are connected robots at risk?
• Market forecasts 2015 to 2025
• Consumer market fastest growing
• Personal robots $9B by 2025
• Quadrupling market to 2025
• Consumer preference survey and the under $2K sweet spot
• What kids eight and under are telling us
• Who’s going to make all those robots: Jobs aplenty
• Drivers: cell phones to robots and $12B of enabling tech
• Stripping off Pepper’s plastic skin: robot motors, sensors and other enablers
• Speaking with sensor makers: ams AG, Austria

History is now about to repeat itself as the personal robot makes the same journey as the cell phone.

Just as the cell phone quickly went from shoe-box-size arm bender to a sleek, pocket-perfect IT partner more powerful and capable than your laptop, so too are personal robots packed up and ready for transformation.

First stop: your living room.

In laboratories around the world, developers are building their personal robot creations and rolling them into the marketplace.

The price tags look decent; there’s pent up demand from consumers (see the Consumer Preferences Survey); developer communities are on the rise with robot apps; and then, glory be! there’s the cloud hovering over the whole mash.

Robotics Business Review is doing its part: We’re dishing out a first look at sixteen personal robots that will be available to consumers in 2016.

This Sweet Sixteen for 2016 catalog of robots represents our picks for the sixteen robots that have the best chance of getting into your living room.

Somewhere among the sixteen there is a robot that can fit most any consumer lifestyle from simple telepresence systems on up to artificial intelligence.

The awakening

Information technology’s newest form factor, the robot, is awakening to new possibilities.

Miniaturization, digitization and Moore’s Law are cascading out of smartphones and tumbling chunks of new technology into robots. And the robots are responding to their newly installed technology.

Most importantly, some of them have the gift of speech. That’s a first for humans who have for millennia spoken only to each other. But now, in our own homes, a new voice will make itself heard.

“Our minds respond to speech as if it were human, no matter what device it comes out of,” noted Stanford University technology forecaster Paul Saffo.

“We’re moving more and more towards an interface like the interface we have with each other,” he said. “Our whole trend is toward ever more intimate interactions with machines […] and with each phase, machines are doing something ever more central to our lives.”

Machines are awakening to us and us to them. That’s something a robo vacuum or pool cleaner or lawn mower can?t touch.

The human reaction to BB-8, the non-speaking ball droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, typifies the connection that machines and humans will experience. Although introduced only in the trailer to the movie, BB-8 quickly became a breakout star.

Matt Denton, the movie’s electronic design and development supervisor, said, “The crew and the cast got really fond of it. People would sort of chirp at it as we carried it past. And when the production wrapped, cast and crew gave it a round of applause.”

Maybe none of our Sweet Sixteen will ever get a round of applause on a movie set or anywhere else, but many, maybe all, are sure to make people fond of them, and that?s the first step in becoming a welcome fixture in most any household.

More than likely you?ll take a shine to one or more in this catalog. Happy browsing and good luck: Sweet Sixteen for 2016

While you’re at it, here’s our Webcast Series schedule for 2016.