The Robot’s haven’t just landed in the workplace—they’re expanding skills, moving up the corporate ladder, showing awesome productivity and retention rates, and increasingly shoving aside their human counterparts. One multi-tasker bot, from Momentum Machines, can make (and flip) a gourmet hamburger in 10 seconds and could soon replace an entire McDonald crew. A manufacturing device from Universal Robots doesn’t just solder, paint, screw, glue, and grasp—it builds new parts for itself on the fly when they wear out or bust. And just this week, Google won a patent to start building worker robots with personalities.
As intelligent machines begin their march on labor and become more sophisticated and specialized than first-generation cousins like Roomba or Siri, they have an outspoken champion in their corner: author and entrepreneur Martin Ford. In his new book, Rise of the Robots, he argues that AI and robotics will soon overhaul our economy.
When it comes to robots, there are many ways you can look at them. They’re either hell-bent on wiping out humanity or our best friends – making us tea and doing the washing. But the fact is, most of that is just fantasy – the tales of sci-fi movies and novels. Of course, we’ll more than likely see a day when robots are mainstream or even our equals, although that won’t happen any time soon. They’re mostly prototypes and elaborate plans put together by billion-dollar companies at this stage.
However, that’s not to say robotic technology doesn’t have potential. There have been plenty of advancements made within the last few years. From intelligent humanoids to bionic limbs, here are the best bits of robotic tech.
ROBOTSUB 