Robots Won't Change Work Until They Become Our Friends

Robots are expected to put many people out of work in the coming years. But before manufacturing and service jobs become totally automated, robots need to win our hearts and minds. According to the most recent edition of From Internet to Robotics, a comprehensive report on the rise of automatons from researchers at Yale, Carnegie Mellon, and other schools studying the robotic shift, robots need to clear several technological and psychological hurdles before they're really accepted in the workplace. To start, robotic hands need to be more dexterous, and controlling them needs to get much easier; but above all, human workers will need to feel like the robots are their friends. The easiest way to do that is through consumerization, or developing automatons for the masses, and using that process to raise more awareness of the benefits robots can offer.