New Year's robolutions

While the past 60 years have defined the field of industrial robots and empowered hard-bodied machines to execute complex assembly tasks in constrained industrial settings, the next sixty years will usher in robots in human-centric environments to assist humans with physical tasks. While the industrial robots of the past 60 years have mostly been inspired by the human form, the next stage will be soft robots inspired by the animal kingdom: form and diversity modeled by our own built environment, with broad potential to mimic our natural state.