Rosie or Jarvis

The future of the smart home is still in the air....

LAS VEGAS -- The tech industry once again can't decide: When it comes to the home of the future, will it have a centralized computer telling you when to mop floors, clean windows and cook breakfast, or will there be an all-in-one robot doing those tasks for you?

Will our lives be filled with a smart hub like Jarvis, the fictional computer personality from the "Iron Man" comic books that helped inventor Tony Stark remotely control his gadgets? Or will there be a robot like Rosie, the ever-present metallic maid who cleaned, cooked and cared for "The Jetsons" cartoon family?

Those competing beliefs were on display at the Consumer Electronics Show here last week, where more than 3,600 technology vendors from around the world came to make their case for their version of the future.

On one side were firms like Nest, which makes a smart thermostat and smoke detector and is now trying to bring Internet-connected things together onto one platform so they can perform tasks together. On another were companies like iRobot, maker of the automated robo-vacuum Roomba.

The simple answer to why the market isn't moving decidedly in one direction has to do with us: Consumers haven't yet picked whether we prefer Rosie or Jarvis. "I'm not sure customers know what they want," said Lauren Orvidas, vice president of Amazon Consumer Electronics. Orvidas oversees the e-commerce giant's online retail stores, which offer everything from cameras to mobile and wearable devices.