Robonable and Tenproxy conducted a survey between November 13th~20th 2009, asking 1000 people their general thoughts on robots and gauging market knowledge and interest.  The full report will be available at a later date, but here are some of the findings:

• 80% of people are interested in robots
• 57% were interested in cleaning robots
• 32% were interested in security guard or rescue robots
• 28% were interested in load transportation robots

General robot knowledge/awareness:

• 30.5% Mars Surveyor
• 20% robot vacuum cleaners
• 3~4% HAL robot suit, therapy robot Paro

Factors in purchasing a robot vacuum:

• 36% said price
• 23% said brand / make
• 17% said “type”

(The survey did not go into details regarding fully autonomous or partly automatic control types, nor did it cover the efficiency of dust clean-up.)

As far as what makes a good robot:

• 45.9% said it should be useful
• 39.2% said accuracy / precision
• 38.2% said advanced functions

I’m a bit surprised that ASIMO or the Toyota Partner Robots didn’t appear anywhere.  Perhaps they would have gotten better results had they asked the respondents about Gundam robots?

[source: Robonable (JP)]