What are the causes for the "false starts and few successes" of robotics ?

In the previous post I commented on the bright, wonderful new future of mobile robotics that is being anticipated. Such cheerful prognostics commonly surface in the area, only to be proven wrong a few years latter down the road. I still remember Ronald Arkin giving an interview saying that in ten years time, robots would walk among us. This was said back in 1995. Or the famous objective of the RoboCup competition: "By mid-21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win the soccer game, comply with the official rule of the FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup." Which is now being recognized as "overly ambitious given the state of the art technology today". Although I must note that the last time the winners of the mid-size league played against a team of humans, they managed to score a goal. The Robocup dream is still far away from realization, but not something that it completely impossible.

The last hype in robotics, but certainly not least, was with their deployment in war theaters, Iraq and Afghanistan specially. Thanks to a better publicized than written book by Peter Singer, Wired for War, which suggested the increased importance of using robots in war. I don't know about that, but if it is true then why isn't the US winning the war in Iraq and Afghanistan ? Did the use of robots really tilted the field to the advantage of the US army ? I have my serious doubts, because the US army is not designed to fight the guerrilla wars it is facing, according to the better written than publicized Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife. Simply put, bigger and better guns don't win guerrilla wars and that has been demonstrated once too many times in history. In all of the three invasions the Napolean army, at the time the best fighting machine, made in Portugal  at the start of the 19th century the guerrilla was fundamental in pushing them away. But I digress.

So, why isn't mobile robotics even close to what has been being promised over, at least, the last decade ? Certainly not due to the lack of quality manpower and resources. The cost of hardware as been decreasing for years, with the computation power increasing steadily. And there are many university institutes and research groups dedicated exclusively to robotics. So, what is it that is holding robotics back ?