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A robonaut performs chores for astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Google speeds ahead with self-driving cars. A robot has learned to cook from watching YouTube videos. Some are telling jokes and dancing for our entertainment; others are consoling us.

Robots are already moving out of the research lab, off the factory floor, and into our everyday lives. But how will those robots evolve—and how will we see them—in the next five years? I asked some of the humans who build them, leaders at the robotics companies Fast Company selected as the year's most innovative.

Robotics developer Hanns Tappeiner is frustrated by the evil killer robots trope that still dominates much of the discussion about robotics. No big surprise there: He's the president and cofounder of Anki Drive, whose dinky autonomous racing cars were Amazon’s second best-selling toy of the 2014 holiday season. Nevertheless, his tiny cars require much of the same sophisticated robotics technology as a full-size autonomous vehicle, from positioning and path planning to computer vision.

Much to the disappointment of science fiction writers everywhere—and contrary to the anxieties of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking—Tappeiner insists that robots will not be taking over the world anytime soon. "Definitely not in the next five years," Tappeiner says. "Probably not in the next 50 years."