With robots, we are inventing a new species that is part material and part digital.The ambition of modern robotics goes beyond copying humans, beyond the effort to make walking,talking androids that are indistinguishable from people. Future robots will have superhumanabilities in both the physical and digital realms. They will be embedded in our physical spaces,with the ability to go where we cannot, and will have minds of their own, thanks to atificialintelligence. They will be fully connected to the digital world, far better at carrying out onlinetasks than we are. In Robot Futures, the roboticist Illah Reza Nourbakhshconsiders how we will share our world with these creatures, and how our society could change as itincorporates a race of stronger, smarter beings. Nourbakhsh imagines a future that includes adbotsoffering interactive custom messaging; robotic flying toys that operate by means of "gazetracking"; robot-enabled multimodal, multicontinental telepresence; and even a way thatnanorobots could allow us to assume different physical forms. Nourbakhsh follows each glimpse intothe robotic future with an examination of the underlying technology and an exploration of the socialconsequences of the scenario. Each chapter describes a form of technologicalempowerment -- in some cases, empowerment run amok, with corporations and institutions amassing evenmore power and influence and individuals becoming unconstrained by social accountability. (Imaginethe hotheaded discourse of the Internet taking physical form.) Nourbakhsh also offers acounter-vision: a robotics designed to create civic and community empowerment. His book helps usunderstand why that is the robot future we should try to bring about.