This is an awesome research project – Making the ultimate Butler and servant staff out of robots. It is interesting to see the challenges and how they reflect the exact dilemmas of making this work with people!

Dautenhahn and her team decided to simplify things by creating a single interface that acts like a head butler, accepting commands from the homeowner on behalf of all the subordinate robots and answering questions.

But if that interface was tied to one “butlerbot”, the homeowner would have to seek out that particular machine whenever they wanted their robot staff to do something. Furthermore, all the other machines in the house would be unhelpfully mute if accosted by the homeowner.

Robot brain jumps bodies to do human bidding – tech – 03 June 2009 – New Scientist.