The conversation is a little reminiscent of "before the car was invented, if you asked what people wanted they would have said a faster horse". If robots became popular in day-to-day, it's not hard to imagine that we would make space for them in our lives anyway. Cars can't traverse the kinds of terrain a horse can, and they require fuel so we have roads and gas stations. If you made a robot that was actually helpful and couldn't take the stairs, you'd start installing dumbwaiters in buildings.