Research googling "domestic robots" turned up PaPeRo, an interesting little droid from NEC last year. An abbreviation of "Partner-type Personal Robot," the PaPeRo 2005 has a short but intriguing list of powers:

Voice recognition via eight embedded mics
Face recognition
Character recognition
Voice synthesis
Visual stream accessible through dual cam eyes
Wireless networking

NEC is developing these robots as personal assistants and roving home security, and they do remind me of a base version of the Pintsize AnthroPC from Jeph Jacques' Questionable Content. A closer look at the specs reveals they're basically mobile, semi-autonomous laptops: 1.8GHz Pentium-M processor, 512MB RAM, 40GB drive, USB 2.0 and what looks like standard video out on the back panel. Given the consumer level hardware, it's obvious we're very close to an explosion of these types of devices.

I'd like to acquire a gaggle of these, load each with some custom Max patches designed to rank and evolve behavioral programming in relation to others in the flock, and turn them loose. Each PaPeRo would communicate with the others as well as a central server on the network. The server would store the state of the shared cultures and individual minds which would undoubtedly arise, and also act as a human interface to the flock's deep behavior.

Evolutionary programming in Max would make for unique and changing individuals and a continually growing tribe. I'd love to watch as personalities and relational complications emerge.