At MIT, a management robot is
learning to run a factory and give orders to artificial co-workers, and a
BakeBot robot is reading recipes, whipping together butter, sugar and flour and
putting the cookie mix in the oven. At the University of California at Berkeley,
a robot can do laundry and then neatly fold T-shirts and towels. A wave of new
robots, affordable and capable of accomplishing advanced human tasks, is being
aimed at jobs that are high in the workforce hierarchy. The consequences of
this leap in technology loom large for the American worker — and perhaps their
managers, too. Back in the 1980s, when automated spray-painting and welding
machines took hold in factories, some on the assembly line quickly discovered they
had become obsolete. Today’s robots can do far more than their primitive,
single-task ancestors. And there is a broad debate among economists, labor
experts and companies over whether the trend will add good-paying jobs to the
economy by helping firms run more efficiently or simply leave human workers out
in the cold.
U.S. firms have already begun
deploying some of these newer robots. General Electric has developed spiderlike
robots to climb and maintain tall wind turbines. Kiva Systems, a company bought
by Amazon.com, has orange ottoman-shaped robots that sweep across warehouse
floors, pull products off shelves and deliver them for packaging. Some
hospitals have begun employing robots that can move room to room to dispense
medicines to patients or deliver the advice of a doctor who is not on site. Many
companies see such automation as the key to cutting costs and staying
competitive. Sales of industrial robots rose 38 percent between 2010 and 2012
and are poised to bring in record revenue this year. Already on the market is
Baxter, a robot developed by a former director of MIT’s lab. With red plastic
arms and a cartoon face, it can do the job of two or more workers,
simultaneously unpacking pipe fittings from a conveyer belt while it weighs and
places mirrors into boxes. When a human blocks its path, Baxter stops, its eyes
widen, and then it courteously gets out of the way.
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