I still remember the first time I saw a Roomba in action,

that little robotic vacuum cleaner that skitters around the house.

It was love at first sight.

And I thought it was beginning of what would no doubt be a revolution in home robotics.

That was maybe 2003, so more than 20 years ago.

The revolution never happened.

My guest today, UC Berkeley Robotics Professor Ken Goldberg has been working on robots for

more than 40 years, and one thing he's learned the hard way is that robots still have a long

way to go.

We have this incredible ability to adapt to changing conditions, and science has not figured that out.

So it's very hard to reproduce that in robots.

Now, humans and animals are existence proof that it can be solved.

It's not like an impossible problem, like time travel. It's so funny because it's right in front of us, but we don't know how to do it.

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

In spite of the inherent challenges in developing robots, there are some who think things

are about to change. Tesla has been working feverishly on a humanoid robot called Optimus.

Elon Musk has predicted that Optimus robots could generate more than $10 trillion in revenue

long term.

Is that realistic?

Ken Goldberg has some opinions on the future of robotics,

but our conversation today starts in the past with how he came to build his very first robot.

When I was a kid, I was really into rockets, models, building things like that.

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