Some day there will be a robot that takes the drudgery (苦工,单调沉闷的工作) out of housework—and even cleans windows, but how soon such a robot will emerge is anybodys guess. Mr. Joseph Engelberger, President of Unimation, Inc. , which makes industrial robots, says a workable domestic robot might take shape by the late 1980s, but Mr. Ben Skora, an amateur robot builder now working on his second creation, predicts household robots in about fifty years, and the Director of Stanford Universitys Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Dr. John McCarthy, says domestic robots are anywhere from five to five hundred years away. Although robots are already widely used in industry—from welding (焊接) car parts to handling explosives—the gap between the industrial robot and a domestic one is great, according to Dr. McCarthy. Closing the gap will require an intellectual break-through. 'Take the task of clearing the table and washing the dishes,' he suggested. 'The robots will have to be able to discriminate between rubbish and dishes that should be washed and, meanwhile, not trip over the dog or baby on the floor on its way to the dishwasher. ' He said that the robot, which he defines as a general purpose physical action machine that is automatically controlled, probably will not end up looking anything like a human being. Instead the robot might have a central 'brain' that controls a whole army of bodies, like a staff of servants, each assigned to a specific duty. Mr. Engelberger thinks the domestic robot is right around in corner, just waiting for an economic boost to help it over the remaining technological hurdles. He expects the household robot to be modeled after an industrial forebear (祖先). 'But the person who wants a robot will have to build this world around it,' Mr. Engelberger said. For example, a fellow building a house might spend twenty-five per cent more to have it 'robotized'. Such a 'robotized' house probably would have to be free of stairs and other encumbrances (障碍物) that could trip a near-sighted robot, would provide special sockets (插座) for it to plug into, and would contain a 'pantry' (餐具室) where the robots brain and tools would be stored. He added that the robot would probably have to use (by means of a sophisticated TV camera) and have a sense of touch to do housework. It could even be programmed for some superhuman tasks, such as acting as a smoke-detector that would alert a family to a fire and then fight it. The day domestic robots come into being is______.