boston—say "robotics" to the average person and certain, expected images leap to their minds: c3po, r2-d2, robby the robot. however, as day one of the fourth annual robo business conference illustrates, "robotics" is no single thing. instead it's products, technologies, initiatives, research, and inventive implementations.

take evolution robotics. president and ceo paolo pirjanian kicked off the event by detailing how his company's visualization, localization, and robotics operating system technologies are in use in some 2 million products, including, apparently, a system to check the bottom basket of shopping carts on checkout. retailers lose over a billion dollars a year in merchandise that rolls out the door in those bins, without anyone paying for them. evolution robotics vision system sees the merchandise and automatically rings it up.

pirjanian tried to drive home the notion that, for now, embedded systems represent the greatest opportunity for the robot business. his company, for example, is working with cell phone manufacturers to implement visual recognition systems in camera phones. still, in order for embedded systems to thrive, noted pirjanian, they must be based on low-cost components.

roomba manufacturer irobot did not build its success on embedded systems, however it clearly arrived at the show looking for technologies that it might be able to embed into its business for future success. during her keynote speech, irobot co-founder and chairman of the board helen greiner drew a virtual roadmap for how attendees could work with the burlington, mass. robotics success story. she outlined what irobot needs and what it doesn't want. the ceo also took the opportunity to officially announce the create challenge.

create is irobot's newest creation, a robotics kit that's built around a very roomba-like platform. now irobot and tom's hardware are looking for the best create creations (irobot's own employees created a beer-fetching robot with one of them). first prize is $5,000. more details can be found here.

irobot has also achieved remarkable success in warfare robots, delivering 900 packbots to the military. an army colonel recently illustrated the importance of the ordinance finding and defusing robot. "when a robot dies, you don't have to write a letter to its mother," he told greiner.

assistant secretary of the army claude m. bolton, jr., dsc., echoed greiner's comments, kicking off his keynote with a video dramatizing the role of autonomous robots in a search and rescue mission following a catastrophic homeland disaster.

"now we have hundreds of robots in the battle arena," said bolton. yet, while unmanned ground and air vehicles are becoming more widely used, "we have very strict rules and [these robots] are always under the control of human beings."

with increased processing power, improved power consumption, and robots' growing ability to communicate with each other, that could change. "that'll be interesting," noted bolton.

when we were done listening to speeches, we marched over to the exhibit hall. take the tour with me in our slideshow.