The "improvements" and "big ideas" the author listed are real and exciting developments. I think about robotics a lot (in academia) but given these developments, a Cambrian explosion (i interpret as robot succeeding in general simple tasks that human can do) is still way beyond my imagination. There are many technical hurdles such as perception, planning, learning and reasoning. The key challenge now seems to be finding scenarios where robots can be successful with current technology.

On a separate note, the robobrain project http://robobrain.me/ seems to fit the running themes in the paper.