As I stick Mirumi onto my backpack, I think to myself, Nothing has changed in a decade. This is the latest consumer bot, the inheritor of a long history of Japanese robots whose purpose is to improve ...

After the apocalypse, we’ll need to build our new robot helpers out of whatever we can find… and we’ll need them to be as cute as possible, to cheer us up. So thank goodness for Mike “Slobot” ...