Smart as they are, I doubt robots worry about things that keep CEOs up at night. But then, robots don’t “stay up at night,” unless they’re running continuously. Insomnia is just another cultural difference between us humans and our new co-workers, the sort of thing we’d want to talk about over a pizza get-together. Except that robots don’t eat, either.

Since I’ve been reading about automation and robotics, I’ve begun to distinguish the straightforward reporting from the desperate guessing. The first is like steel wire, useful and self-evident. The second is more like silk floss, requiring special handling and prone to unraveling. I’ve seen many examples of each, always attempting to lasso this subject, and they tend to tangle together. Where robotics is concerned, we really do live in interesting times.

On the factual front, robots make great workers, especially for 3D tasks—the dull, dirty, and dangerous. What they lack in lunchroom humor they make up for in tireless and uncomplaining productivity. With the latest improvements in machine vision, force sensing, and speech recognition, they’re ready to tackle jobs that require finicky precision and collaboration. Robots are, in short, poised to join the team.

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