South Korea Creating a Robot Utopia

As it has embraced other technologies, South Korea is aiming to be the premier country in the world for personal robotics. Already the most wired nation (72% of households have broadband Internet), the government hopes to have robots in every South Korean home by no later than 2020.

The government has been randomly distributing experimental robots to households and businesses. Most of these perform simple tasks such as cleaning, but developers are working on robots that can "read" human emotion and provide true companionship.

South Korea prides itself in being a technological guinea pig, testing and adopting technologies long before they appear elsewhere.

RELATED: Read an interview with Helen Greiner, co-founder of iRobot, in Knowledge@Wharton (registration required)

Source: New York Times