There was an episode (maybe a few) of Deep Space Nine a while back which featured a holographic communications system. The people participating in the communication would each sit in a chair within the bounds of the device (re-inventing the open-air phone booth I suppose) and would be able to see and talk to each other as if they were sitting across a coffee table.
That doesn’t exist quite yet. Ditto for the transporter room, faster-than-light travel and the sexy aliens. (That’s not quite true. The sexy aliens may very well exist, but we haven’t met them yet. Not officially anyhow.)
I’ve been intrigued by the iRobot Roomba for a while now. Roomba is essentially a robotic vacuum cleaner. It’s not as talented as Rosie from the Jetsons, but the idea of having the vacuuming “just happen” without any effort on my part is very appealing. (I’m a guy. Having a robot do the vacuuming would greatly increase the odds of it happening.)
Checking out the iRobot website this evening, I discovered they have a new robot. Along with the vacuum cleaner, the pool cleaner, and the gutter cleaner, they now have a “Virtual Visiting Robot” which apparently uses a combination of robotics, VOIP, and streaming video to allow to you interact with your family when you’re away from home. (It occurs that you could also send this along when the family went out of town and you had to work over the weekend, but that would be a clear-cut case of mis-applied technology and a pretty good reason to find a new job if your boss ever suggests such a thing.)
It’s not quite the holographic communication system, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
Also intriguing – and in the words of Dave Barry, I swear I’m not making this up – is the robot they created in a partnership with John Deere: the “R-Gator.” This is essentially a John Deere Gator (you’ve perhaps seen them used at parks and zoos, sort of a heavy-utility all-terrain version of a golf cart), but outfitted with robotic systems so it can drive itself.
The R-Gator is also described as an “Unmanned Ground Vehicle” and appears to only be available for Government/Military use. The aforementioned Roomba starts its vacuum-cleaning cycle by moving in an expanding circular path as it seeks out dirt. I can’t help thinking that the ‘R’ in “R-Gator” perhaps stands for “Roomba.” Maybe the Roomba-gator starts out all of its missions by also moving in a circular pattern. (On the scarier end of the spectrum, according to one report, during an early phase of their development, the machine gun-toting “SWORDS” military robots had “a tendency to spin out of control from time to time.” So perhaps the idea of military robots based on Roomba isn’t so far-fetched after all!)
So iRobot is doing a pretty good job of fulfilling some predictions of the future:

• …a precursor to Rosie. check
• …telepresence like Deep Space Nine (all that’s missing is the holograph). check
• …military robots like the ones in the Terminator movies. check (shudder)

Hey, wait a second! Where are the sexy aliens?
Nuts. What kind of a future is this anyhow?