Matt Trossen’s talk from the 2007 RoboDevelopment conference is on YouTube (in ten parts). He does the typical techno-timeline leading up to robotics, posits where robotics can go, the impediments, next steps, need for standards, the usual drill, but well laid out.

I like the way he starts out:

When I look out into the crowd, I see a room of unresaonable people. Then he quotes from George Bernard Shaw: “A reasonable man adapts himself to the world: An unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

RoboDev Speech pt. 1 – Link