British inventor James Dyson, who changed the humble home vacuum cleaner into a desirable high-tech gadget, says he's investing $8 million in a robotics lab.

The new Dyson Robotics Laboratory will be located at Imperial College London, where a research team of researchers and engineers will work on advanced sensing, interpretation of environment, and robot vision and interaction, CNET reported Monday.

The research could yield household "chore" robots and other domestic help hardware.

"My generation believed the world would be overrun by robots by the year 2014," Dyson said in a release announcing the investment. "We now have the mechanical and electronic capabilities, but robots still lack understanding -- seeing and thinking in the way we do.

"Mastering this will make our lives easier and lead to previously unthinkable technologies."

The Dyson lab will be headed by Imperial College London robot vision Professor Andrew Davison, who will supervise a research team of 15.