I've always wanted my own personal robot to make Red Bull runs to the refrigerator for me, and now it seems like this dream may come true. When computer craze hit in the 1980's there was also a movement for personal robots. Unfortunately this quickly died out due to the robots generally being quite pricy, fairly proprietary with little or no room for upgrades, and tending to promise more than they actually delivered. 

Whitebox Robotics is trying to breath some life into this field of technology by producing an affordable line of robots that use the VIA Mini-ITX cpu/motherboard units as a platform. Referred to as the 912 series, these robots will establish an industry standard, using regular computer parts and the same standards as an ATX case. Just about any computer part you can get your hands on can be added to these to customize your robot. They run a Windows operating system, and can be programmed to do a variety of tasks such as obstacle avoidance, security patrols, telepresence, object recognition, and speech recognition and synthesis. Slated for release summer of 2004.