THE dream: a robot servant to pick up around the house, do laundry, cook dinner and perhaps even go on errands. The reality: cadres of little devices, buzzing like bees as they clean dirt and debris from every imaginable two-dimensional surface.

It’s 2014 and home robots don’t look a bit like Rosie, the all-purpose mechanical maid on “The Jetsons.” Even so, the appeal of outsourcing some of the most hated household chores to a machine has given rise to an array of tiny servants.

There are robots to wash windows, scour patio grills, scrub floors and mow the lawn. One cleans pools and another, aptly named RoboSnail, moves over the glass or acrylic surfaces of aquariums, polishing as it goes.

Consumer robotics is now a $1.6 billion industry, with task-oriented robots accounting for roughly half of that, according to ABI Research. Analysts say sales could triple to $6.5 billion by 2017.