Robots are here, there, everywhere, and many people don't realize it. They're already indispensable to modern life. They help produce the food we eat and products we buy. They make vehicles safer and easier to operate. And they increase the precision and success of medical procedures.

That's to say, robots play a role in our lives that science fiction never predicted would occur.

So claimed a panel of expert roboticists Thursday at the Hillman Center Auditorium at Carnegie Mellon University who offered bold analyses of robots' role in our lives and even bolder predictions about the future of robotics.

Discussion moderator Corey S. Powell, Discover magazine editor in chief, said panel members are pioneers in robotics who have been "imagining the impossible" and making it happen. The panel included Rodney Brooks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Javier Movellan of the University of California San Diego, Robin Murphy of Texas A&M, and William "Red" Whittaker of CMU.

Hosted by Discover, the National Science Foundation and CMU, the evening represented the latest in "The Grand Challenges of Science" series of discussions and focused on robotics.

The comments were varied and sometimes surprising. As the search continues for life on other planets, our first encounters with alien intelligence is underway with our interaction with robots, Mr. Powell noted.

For now, robots explore Earth's most dangerous places -- underground, underwater and overhead. They can survive extreme temperatures and places riddled with chemicals and toxic material. They've already replaced humans in exploring Mars and the moon.

While robots do difficult and thankless jobs in everyday life, they also show growing potential as personable companions and in time could become love interests who love us in return, Dr. Movellan said.

Mr. Powell said such statements reflect "how limited science fiction has been when compared with what is happening now."

"Huge technological breakthroughs are transforming everyday lives here and developing at an astonishing pace," he said.

Dr. Brooks founded iRobot, which produces robotic vacuum sweepers, pool cleaners and floor washers, among other products that work without human assistance. Dr. Movellan creates robots that educate children. Dr. Murphy's focus is search-and-rescue robots.

Dr. Whittaker led CMU's Tartan Racing to victory in a 2007 competition during which robotic vehicles traveled 60 miles of cityscape without human assistance. He's now focused on winning the $20 million Google X Prize by sending a robot to the moon that can send back live video.

Robotics represent a huge field of research, with 500 paid employees in CMU's Robotics Institute alone, said Matthew T. Mason, the institute's director, who introduced the panel.

The field is in its infancy.

Robots have yet to rescue a human from rubble. None was used in Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake, Dr. Murphy said.

Robots already are being used in war. One of Dr. Brooks' companies, which builds robots that test bombs in Afghanistan, has been credited with saving soldiers' lives. But using robots in war to kill the enemy remains controversial, as does the use of robots to replace people in the workplace.

Dr. Whittaker said robots serve only as tools for people and brushed aside concerns that people will lose jobs to robots.

"Show me one person in this region who was replaced by a robot," he said, noting that robotics businesses have generated 1,000 high-paying jobs region-wide. He said the robotics industry will be bigger than the automobile, computer, and airline industries of the last century.

Without robotic technology, automakers and other high-tech companies couldn't remain in business, he said.

Robots already are interacting with people. The CoBot in development at CMU is designed to escort people through academic buildings and serve as high-tech gofers to fetch coffee or mail. Eventually humanoid robots will be human companions that can talk, walk, interact and assist people in everyday life.

Dr. Brooks said the goal is to create robots with the object-recognition ability of a 2-year-old, language capabilities of a 4-year-old, manual dexterity of a 6-year-old and the understanding of social interaction of an 8- or 9-year-old. "If we make progress on any one of those four, robots will get much better," he said.

It also will be an ethical imperative for robots to save lives, which already is occurring. Dr. Whittaker said robots have saved tens of thousands of lives in medicine and in making vehicles safer. It's inevitable, he said, that "robots will be credited with the rescue of human life, and the people here tonight will be the ones who do that."

Every appliance, in time, will be robotic and help transform our lives, Dr. Brooks said.

But Dr. Movellan took the discussion a step further. Robots, he said, will help define more clearly what it means to be human: "Robots are the best way to learn how humans are put together."

As occurred with printing presses, cameras, movies and the Internet, sex will drive development of robots, with expectations that people someday will be intimate with robots. But Dr. Whittaker said it has been the policy of the Robotics Institute to stay clear of such research topics. But it's clear, he said, that such topics "will give new meaning to our toys, our tools and our playmates."

In years to come, he also predicted, today's robots will be "primitive antiques" in museums as more sophisticated robots assume larger roles in modern life.

"Robots already are doing well on the land, in the sea, and in the air," Dr. Whittaker said. "There's no going back. There's no putting the robot back in the bottle.

"They are here to stay."

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