The robots from the movies and cartoons of the 1970s will become the reality of the 2020s.

There are two main drivers behind this: modeling belief space and cloud robotics.

Belief space refers to a mathematical framework that allows us to model a given environment statistically and develop probabilistic outcomes. It is basically the application of algorithms to make sense of new or messy contexts. For robots, modeling belief space opens the way for greater situational awareness. It has led to breakthroughs in areas like grasping, once a difficult robot task. Until recently, belief space was far too complex to sufficiently compute, a task made all the more difficult by the limited sets of robot experience available to analyze. But advances in data analytics have combined with exponentially greater sets of experiential robot data to enable programmers to develop robots that can now intelligently interact with their environment.

Cloud robotics means that robots are no longer stand-alone pieces of electronics with capabilities limited to the hardware and software inside the unit.

If the C-3PO depicted in the original Star Wars walked into a classroom and interrupted a lecture, the software and hardware inside his gold, gleaming body would start whirring and would instruct him to excuse himself in the appropriate language and go hobble to an open seat. It would take a ton of processing power and space-age analytics to enable the cognition, speech, and mobility that went into C-3PO’s “decisions” and actions.

When the real-world C-3PO of the 2020s walks into the same situation, he will ping the cloud, and act based on the instructions delivered by a noiseless algorithm crunching data from all the C-3PO equivalents that ever existed and encountered similar situations. The cloud-enabled C-3PO will not need all the expensive hardware and software that the movie version did. He’ll be a much less expensive robot.

I promise you I’m not a middle-aged space nut who lives in his mother’s basement, re-watching old movies and playing video games. My prediction that the robots from the movies and cartoons of the 1970s will become the reality of the 2020s is based on observations from travel that is equal to 25 circumferences around the globe during just the last five years.

Among the things I’ve seen is a humanoid robot called NAO that is serving as a teaching assistant in science and computer science classes in 70 countries. It has also been adapted to serve as a classroom buddy to help students with autism communicate more effectively. At one elementary school in Harlem, the NAO robot sits or stands on students’ desks and helps them with their math work.

I saw a near knock-off of the Jetsons’ robot nanny and housekeeper Rosie. Toyota (yes, the car company) built a nursing aide named Robina—modeled after Rosie—as part of their Partner Family Robot, a line of robots to take care of the world’s growing geriatric population. Robina is a 125 pound “female” robot that can communicate using words and gestures. With wide-set eyes, a mop-top hairdo, and a flowing white metallic skirt, Robina is even more stylish than Rosie—if by stylish you mean metallic chic mated with a robotic assistant who can monitor your vital signs.

Robina has a “brother” named Humanoid, a multi-purpose home assistant that can do the dishes, take care of your parents when they’re sick, and even provide impromptu entertainment: one version plays the trumpet, another plays the violin.

Most of these robots are coming from east Asia, especially Japan. The ancient Japanese religion Shinto includes a belief in animism, which holds that both objects and human beings have spirits. As a result, Japanese culture tends to be more accepting of robot companions as actual companions, unlike Western culture, which views robots as soulless machines. In a culture where the inanimate can be considered to be just as alive as the animate, robots can be seen as members of society rather than the threat they are often depicted as in Western culture.

The concept of robots comes from a dark place in western literature. The term “robot” was first coined by Czech science-fiction writer Karel Čapek. “Robot” derives its etymological roots from two Czech words: rabota(“obligatory work”) and robotnik (“serf”) to describe, in Čapek’s conception, a new class of artificial people that would be created as slaves to mankind.

Robots, in essence, represent the merger of two long-standing trends: the advancement of technology to do our work and the use of a servant class that can provide cheap labor for higher classes of society. Robots are a sign of technological advancement and also an updated version of the slave labor that in past centuries people used to exploit other human beings.

Čapek’s plot in Rossum’s Universal Robots—a factory manufactures robots that are supposed to be slaves but who ultimately rebel to destroy the human race—encapsulates many of the fears that have usually accompanied both technological change and highly unequal labor systems.

The rise of the robots will create a new “belief space” for us humans as we learn to work and live alongside them, bringing to reality the dreams of people watching old movies.

To read more from Alec Ross about robotics, genomics, data analytics, and other drivers of the next 10 years of innovation, pre-order his book The Industries of the Future (out February 2), currently the no. 1 New International Business Book on Amazon.