New discoveries in robot technology have some observers saying that we're in the midst of a robotic revolution. While it's true that more and more innovations are being done in robotics it doesn't necessarily mean that there will be robots in every household in the next few years.

New robot technology has been making the news sites recently. From Boston Dynamics PETMAN to the gecko-like robot that can climb walls from the MENRVA lab at Simon Fraser University in Canada, robot advancement seems to be coming more frequently. And it hasn't stopped there. A Queensland University of Technology professor has built a dinner-plate sized robot that can fly without outside direction. Professor Peter Corke said that the robot is meant to go into places that are too dangerous to humans. The flying robot is unique because unlike other flying devices available today, it can actually think for itself. Professor Corke expects to be done with the flying robot and out of the lab in two years

A team in Franhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation in Germany has turned to the animal kingdom for inspiration. The team designed a robot spider that can be used as an exploratory tool in hazardous environments. Why a spider design? The eight legs make the robot very agile and better able to handle different terrain.

Now if you have all these robots how do you get them to listen to a human being? A team from the University of Tsukaba has devised a wireless headband that can capture facial expressions and can be used to train a Nao Humanoid robot in real time. Anna Gruebler and her colleagues have already tested the headband to control avatars in the game Second Life. By smiling or frowning at robots, the trainer can easily teach the appropriate actions for the robot.

All of these developments are fantastic and make for great stories but they're really just the starting step to a real robotics revolution. To make robots more accessible to everyday people, robots shouldn't just be weird robot spiders they should be as innocuous as your average coffee dispenser. In short to make robots an everyday part of human life, they should be doing mundane tasks and they should do it well that we can take them for granted.