This book is fairly old now - first published in 1992, so it's missing the last quarter century of development. That being said, I didn't pick it up for details on the latest research in robotics. Rather, I noted when flipping through it that the first couple of chapters were on robots in mythology and the early history of automated machines and I thought that would be pretty interesting. And it was! An excellent start, and an excellent end with the lengthy focus on the potential of sex-bots. It sort of slumped in the middle for me though. I just have no interest in the development of robots to increase car-building speed on the assembly line, or what research in tactile sensors was like in the 80s.