Future Horizons, a semi-conductor analyst company based in Kent, in England, believes that by 2010 there will be 55.5 million robots, in a world market worth more than $75 billion — up from $6.13 billion last year.

But the real explosion in robotics is coming among the “immobots,” or “bots” — bits of software that are incorporated into larger objects. We’re getting glimpses of how good these can be: the TiVo personal video recorder has something that decides, based on the programs you choose to record, what other programs you might like to see and records those, too.