The Japanese car firm Toyota might one start to mass-produce robots to help the elderly. According to Gill Pratt, head of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), the firm is looking ahead into the distant future when there will robots that help out in homes. The firm could use the same methods it uses now to produce cars on a large scale, making the production of robots cheaper Mr Pratt said. Toyota has already shown an R2-D2-like robot designed to help the elderly, the sick and people in wheelchairs by picking up and carrying objects. Toyotal's home helper robot developer community and working prototype pictured The Japanese car manufacturer announced last year it would invest 1 billion ( 682 million) over the next five years.

As fast-food workers across the country vie for 15 per hour wages, many business owners have already begun to take humans out of the picture. "I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry -- it's cheaper to buy a 35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who's inefficient making 15 an hour bagging French fries -- it's nonsense and it's very destructive and it's inflationary and it's going to cause a job loss across this country like you're not going to believe," said former McDonald's (MCD) USA CEO Ed Rensi during an interview on the FOX Business Network's Mornings with Maria. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.3 million people earned the current minimum wage of 7.25 per hour with about 1.7 million having wages below the federal minimum in 2014. These three million workers combined made up 3.9 percent of all hourly paid workers. "It's not just going to be in the fast food business. Franchising is the best business model in the United States. It's dependent on people that have low job skills that have to grow. Well if you can't get people a reasonable wage, you're going to get machines to do the work. It's going to happen whether you like it or not. And the more you push this it's going to happen faster," Rensi added.