The Future Of Work: Collaborative Robots

Collaborative robots aren’t just invading fast-food restaurants and warehouses. They will also take work from lawyers and underwriters. Recent developments in robotics and artificial intelligence have changed the playing field for automated technologies.

Historically, automation was beyond the reach of small and medium-sized companies. Robotics were costly, required highly sophisticated programming expertise, took months to integrate and could only perform single, discrete tasks.

In 2012, the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) was a game changer. AI brought collaborative robots to the market — robots that see and feel like humans, learn (including integrating new data sets and information) and perform multiple tasks.

These collaborative robots are also more cost-effective and easier to integrate, making them available and attractive to small and medium-sized businesses.

AI and robotics are now transforming many traditional labor-intensive industries, such as farming, construction, factories and fast food. While Amazon continues to be a global leader in leveraging AI and smart robots, there are plenty of examples of smaller businesses across the country embracing these new automated technologies.