For all the media attention spent these days on the development of robotic technology, less than half of all Americans say they would actually want to ride in a driver-less vehicle and 65 percent wouldn't trust automatons to care for the sick or elderly.

Such guarded opinions about future innovations and scientific changes were revealed through a new national survey by The Pew Research Center, which asked Americans about an array of potential scientific developments -- in robotics and bioengineering and more fantastic possibilities, such as teleportation or space colonization.

Overall, the study, based on telephone interviews conducted in either English or Spanish, between Feb. 13-18, 2014 with 1,001 adults aged 18 years or older and living in all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, according to an explanation of the study findings posted at the research company's Website.

The survey discovered while about 59 percent of Americans anticipate coming technological and scientific changes will improve life in the future, an estimated 30 percent believe such changes in the future will leave people worse off than they are today.

Pew found about 81 percent of Americans expect sometime in the next 50 years human organs will be custom grown in laboratories, while and 51 percent anticipate computers will be able to create works of art virtually indistinguishable from those produced by humans.

Meanwhile, the public perceives limits to what science can or should be allowed to accomplish over the next 50 years.

Fewer than half of Americans, 39 percent, think they'll see objects, or people, teleported between locations and only one in three, or 33 percent, think humans will have colonized other planets by that time.

Just 19 percent of Americans are confident humankind will be able to manipulate the weather in the foreseeable future.

The research also tapped into a notable amount of distrust and concern many Americans apparently maintain for some of the more controversial breakthroughs seen on the horizon:

  • About 66 percent think it would be a change for the worse if prospective parents could alter the DNA of their children to produce smarter, healthier, or more athletic offspring;
  • An estimated 63 percent think it would be a bad change if personal and commercial drones are given permission to fly in U.S. airspace; and
  • About 53 percent of Americans think it would make life worse if most people started wearing implants or other devices that constantly show them information about the world around them, such as Google Glass.

Many older Americans, it was found, appear unexcited about futuristic inventions of any kind, with an estimated 15 percent saying they can't think of any invention they would like to own and 41 percent unsure of what type of invention in the future, if any, they would enjoy.