IN DECEMBER OF 2016, a team of researchers showed up at Romy Camargo’s house with a better-than-average holiday gift. The front of the nondescript silver box lowered—like one of those spaceship doors from Star Wars, minus the dramatic clouds of vapor—to reveal a fetching robot, with cameras for eyes and a flatscreen for a hat. With the assistance of its human handlers, the Human Support Robot, as Toyota calls it, wheeled into Camargo’s home on a mission: to support the quadriplegic veteran and in the process pave the way for truly useful care robots.