Rise of the robots: 10 smart bots ready to take over your home

Rise of the robots

Picture the scene: you are at home and things are just getting on top of you. Household chores have piled up to the point that you can't walk anywhere without leaving dust-based footsteps, the grass in your garden is higher than Snoop Dogg on a weekend and the alarm clock that wakes you up every morning does nothing else but stay on your bedside table chiding you.

Here are 10 of our favourites, complete with a rating as to how likely they are to go sentient and take over the world - because that's the sort of thing we worry about at TechRadar.

1. Dyson 360 Eye

The newest robot vacuum cleaner is also one of the best. The Dyson 360 Eye was 18 years in the making and has cost the company about $56 million in pre-production, with many a prototype made before the 'bots final incarnation.

2. iRobot Scooba 450

Not content with owning the robot vacuum market, iRobot has also created a floor-scrubbing robot. The Scooba is the first robot that will scrub your filthy floors and get rid of 99.3% of household bacteria, which means it leaves a mere 0.7% of danger in its wake.

3. RoboMow RS630

The only way mowing the lawn is fun is if you are lucky enough to have a massive lawn, get one of those sit-down mowers and pretend you are playing Mario Kart. Otherwise it's a massive chore bore. Well, it was before the robot gods decided to give us something called the Robomow.

4. Nanda Clocky

Now this is a strange one. Nanda Clocky is a self-thinking alarm clock that runs away and hides from you when the alarm goes off. The idea being that you have to get out of bed, find the thing and turn it off.

There's no way this thing would ever turn sentient and take over the world, because anyone that owns one would have taken the batteries out within a week's use - or battered the thing to death with a shoe. You should never mess with sleepy people.

5. WheeMe Massage Robot

Everyone loves a massage but usually the reason they love having one is because it is being given by another human with real human hands. That and you can listen to Enya legitimately, with no remorse. WheeMe wants to take humans out of the equation and offer up a massage robot style.

Available from Amazon

6. Alpha 1S Humanoid Robot

Its eyes may be full of evil but there's a lot to love about the Alpha 1S 'bot. This robot apes human movement thanks to its 16 patented joints and will dance, walk and even play football to entertain you.

7. Asus Zenbo

Not content with offering up lovely looking laptops, Asus has created what it calls 'a smart little companion'. The Zenbo is multi-faceted: it can show movies on its screen, react to emergencies in the home and go up to people and speak reminders to them.

8. Double 2 Telepresence Robot

When you really want to be somewhere but can't be, FaceTime is a damn-good substitution. But there's a small problem with it: it's not actually like 'really' being there. Really being there would be being able to move around and follow the person you are speaking to like some sort of cyber stalker.

9. Jibo

Despite sounding like a massive insult, Jibo is actually the world's first social robot. What that means in plain English is that it can send reminders, communicate in an emotive way and pretty much act like a personal assistant.

10. SoftBank Pepper

SoftBank has been in the news of late because it is the Japanese company set to takeover British chip architecture firm Arm. But before it got into Brexit-bargain acquisitions, it spent some of its time building impressive robots.