With a tank-like continuous track and an angular arm reminiscent of the Pixar lamp, the lightweight PackBot robot was designed to seek out, defuse and dispose of the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that killed and injured thousands of coalition soldiers during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bomb disposal was and is highly dangerous work, but the robot could take on the riskiest parts while its human team controlled it remotely from a safer distance. US Army explosive ordinance disposal technician Phillip Herndon was assigned a PackBot during his first tour in Iraq. Herndon's team named their robot Duncan, after a mission when the robot glitched and began spinning in circles, or doughnuts (doughnuts led to Dunkin Donuts, hence Duncan). His fellow bomb disposal techs named theirs too, and snapped photos of themselves next to robots holding Xbox controllers, dressed in improvised costumes or posing with a drink in their claws.

EIT Digital is putting its weight behind the concept of autonomous robot colleagues for hard-pressed professionals in elderly care provision by supporting the development of SARA (Social & Autonomous Robotic health Assistant) as part of its focus on Digital Wellbeing. SARA is a consortium-led initiative that aims to improve the quality of care in nursing homes and hospitals by introducing robots as social entities – taking on time-consuming tasks and interacting with patients without requiring a human operator. The consortium includes analytics and data science specialist Bright Cape, Forum Virium Helsinki, GIM Robotics, Curamatik and TU Berlin. The idea is to address the twin challenges of caring for a rapidly ageing population and an acute shortage of healthcare professionals, helping to balance a workload that is under ever-increasing pressure: it is estimated that 13.8% of nurses deal every week with the consequences of heavy work pressure – medication errors, for example – while patients feel the impact on quality of care. While there is nothing new about the idea of robot colleagues in healthcare, most of the current generation of robots perform activities that need to be set up and led by a human operator.

Researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have built Alyx, a robot colleague that teaches autistic people to recognise social cues, as Matthew Stock found out. A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have built Alyx, a robot colleague that teaches autistic people to recognise social cues, as Matthew Stock found out.

It is not unusual for staff to moan about an unfeeling "robotic" manager or the "computer says no" mentality of their HR department. But if the predictions of technology soothsayers are to be believed, those complaints could soon take on a much more literal dimension. A 2015 study by Oxford University and Deloitte suggested that around 35 per cent of existing UK jobs are likely to become automated in the next 20 years, with administrative jobs or those involving repetitive tasks most likely to be replaced by some form of automation. It seems likely that this will lead to significant job losses, as well as changing the workplace substantially for those whose jobs remain. Read more: Here's how to stop a robot taking your job So what could this look like in practice?

We have a crisis of work. The secure, well-paid jobs of the past -- many of them in manufacturing -- are disappearing. What is replacing them is insecurity and uncertainty. The "gig economy", where people are paid performance by performance -- or piece by piece. "Piecework", we used to call it.