My new robot just arrived yesterday. It is really super. It will take time to program it to do everything that I want it to do, but it has speach recognition and sight recognition. It soon will have a 'head' and Hal's conversational abilities.
By the way, most robots are controlled by stepper motors and everyone in the robot community overlooks some very small and very powerful motors just made for the job. They are available at the local auto junk yard. They control the power seats. Think about it, three people in front seat, weighing maybe 600 pounds, the motor lifts them easily.
Bill819