Robotics

Yes. Modern robot vacuums map your home, avoid obstacles, mop, empty themselves and run for weeks without attention. They still cannot pick up the clutter first, and stairs remain their nemesis.

In specific towns and suburbs, yes — commercial drone delivery is real and often faster than a van. Coverage is the problem: airspace approvals, noise, weather and payload limits keep it to a small fraction of addresses.

In a growing number of towns and campuses, yes — pavement robots genuinely deliver groceries and takeaways, and they mostly work. Coverage is the catch: unless you live inside a served zone with tolerable pavements, it isn't an option, and remote operators still take over more often than the marketing suggests.

Yes — printed homes are occupied in several countries. What is printed is usually the concrete wall structure; foundations, roof, services and fit-out remain conventional. Cost savings are real but smaller than headlines suggest.

In research, users genuinely feel touch through nerve-interfaced prosthetics, and it measurably improves control. Commercially available advanced prosthetics offer excellent grip patterns but only limited or no true sensory feedback, and cost is a major barrier.

In pilots, under supervision, on narrow tasks. Several manufacturers have humanoids moving totes and feeding lines in real facilities, which is a genuine step up from stage demos. Throughput, uptime and cost per pick are still nowhere near the wheeled robots and fixed automation already doing this work.

In a lab, yes. In your house, no. Research and demo robots fold towels and shirts at slow speed under good lighting, and general-purpose humanoids show it off constantly. Nothing you can buy will reliably empty a real basket of tangled mixed laundry.

No. Single-purpose home robots — vacuums, mowers, window cleaners — are genuinely good. A general machine that picks up whatever your family left on the floor, decides where it belongs and puts it away is a research problem, not a product.

No. Humanoids are advancing quickly in warehouses and pilot deployments, but general household work is unsolved. Early units that exist are expensive, supervised, narrow in skill and mostly sold to businesses or developers.