Black boxes rattle along miles of conveyor belt, carrying everything from toys to painkillers amid a cacophony of alarms and the faint hum of Christmas songs. "I'm looking around here at anything that might not be right, but it's actually running very smoothly," says David Tindal, the general manager of the Swindon fulfilment centre. "The team has been fantastic. We spend the whole year preparing for this peak time, like a good football club preparing for the cup final." Known internally as BRS2 – using a naming system based on the nearest big airport (in this case, Bristol) – the warehouse is a vision in gleaming concrete, steel and glass landed on the Wiltshire countryside.

California's high poverty rate, low wages and frayed public safety net require a new "social compact" between workers, business and government, according to a report by a blue-ribbon commission that highlights the state's widening inequality. In a report released Monday, the Future of Work Commission, a 21-member body appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in August 2019, laid out a grim picture of the challenges facing the world's fifth-largest economy, even as it acknowledged the Golden State's technology leadership, its ethnically and culturally diverse workforce and world-class universities. "Too many Californians have not fully participated in or enjoyed the benefits of the state's broader economic success and the extraordinary wealth generated here, especially workers of color who are disproportionately represented in low-wage industries," the report says. California has the highest poverty rate in the country when accounting for the cost of living, 17.2%, according to the report. Since 2012, wages in the state grew by 14% while home prices increased by 68%.

Part of the UK Government's aim to give people five years of longer, healthier life, it has announced a £34 million investment to develop robots capable of providing support for Britons and making caring responsibilities easier. With one in seven people in the UK now expected to be over 75 years old by 2040, care robots could help provide the UK's dedicated adult social care sector with more assistance for those who need it most. The Government has launched the UK's biggest research programme entirely dedicated to making autonomous systems safe and trustworthy for public use with investment that could help develop robots to one day fulfil tasks such as helping an elderly person up after a fall and raising the alarm, delivering food to an older person at mealtimes, and ensuring they take crucial medication at the correct time. This cutting-edge programme will undertake research into their design, for example ensuring robots are better protected against cyber-attacks and that they demonstrate principles like respect, fairness and equality, enabling them to eventually be used in environments like care homes and hospitals. In the healthcare sector, this dedicated programme could enable care robots work alongside professionals to assist and complement their work, and help relieve pressures.

The CHIRON consortium are aiming to revolutionise long-term care with exciting robotic technology. We hear this phrase almost every day and we recognise that this is an area where we need to do a lot of convincing. However, we are really excited by the possibilities that robotics can offer. The CHIRON consortium is a somewhat unlikely group of experts and professionals from across the UK. Jobeda Ali from Three Sisters Care was the driving force behind the CHIRON consortium.

Since the first computer-managed elements entered service in a General Motors auto manufacturing plant in 1961, almost every service and manufacturing industry in the world has benefited from increased automation provided -- to a greater or lesser degree -- by robotics. And, as industries become more deeply interconnected as a result of the demands of globalization and ubiquitous connectivity, so the very nature of robots will also evolve. However, increased proliferation of robots will bring as many new or accentuated risks as benefits, heightening the need for control over our creations. Today, there are many different types of robots in commercial and private use, with form factors varying considerably from the static to the fully mobile, from the microscopic to the truly huge and from the single function-specific design to the multi-function, modular types popularised by science fiction. Risks and threats posed by robots will also vary considerably.