Robots that deliver

Robots that walk, talk, pour beer and play pingpong have taken over the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) gadget show in Las Vegas again. Just don’t expect to find one in your home any time soon.

Most home robot ventures have failed, in part because they’re so difficult and expensive to design to a level of intelligence that consumers will find useful, says Bilal Zuberi, a robotics-oriented venture capitalist at Lux Capital. But that doesn’t keep companies from trying.

‘‘Roboticists, I guess, will never give up their dream to build Rosie,’’ says Zuberi, referring to the humanoid maid from The Jetsons.

But there’s some hope for others. Frank Gillett, a tech analyst at Forrester, says robots with more focused missions such as mowing the lawn or delivering cheeseburgers stand a better shot at finding a useful niche.

There are so many delivery robots at CES that it’s easy to imagine that we’ll be stumbling over them on the sidewalk or in the elevator before long.

Zuberi says it’s among the new robot trends with the most promise because the field is drawing on some of the same advances that power self-driving cars.

But it’s hard to tell which – if any – will be around in a few years.

Segway Robotics, part of the same company that makes electric rental scooters, is the latest to get into the delivery game with a new machine it calls Loomo. The wheeled office robot can avoid obstacles, board elevators and deliver documents to another floor.

A similar office courier called the Holabot was unveiled by Chinese startup Shenzhen Pudu Technology. Chief executive Felix Zhang says his company already has a track record in China, where its Pudubot robot – which looks like shelves on wheels – navigates busy restaurants as a kind of robotic waiter.

Nearly all of these robots use a technology called visual SLAM, short for simultaneous localisation and mapping.

Most are wheeled, though there