I see in the next year, humanoid robots becoming a big influence on standard robotic tasks, espeically with teleoperation enabled!
The low cost hardware is definitely around in japan, but slowly rising here in the Americas,
http://www.robotshop.ca/c215005p16471614.2.html
The robosapien V2 with programmable micro will quickly change the face of cheap humanoid robots thanks to Mark Tilden, the one man competition to Honda and Sony.
http://www.onrobo.com/content/view/52/2/