Robotic Revolution Research Articles

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article:The Information Technology Revolution Tom Forester, (ed.)Work, Unemployment and the New Technology Colin Gill, Polity PressThe Robotics Revolution Peter B. Scott.Manufacturing Systems: Context, Applications and Techniques Victor Bignell, Mike Dooner, John Hughes, Chris Pym and Sheila StoneJob Redesign: Critical Perspectives on the Labour Process David Knights, Hugh Wilmott and David Collinson

From Washington: The robot revolution: an interview with James Albus

There is growing awareness among U.S. manufacturers that time is running short to reorganize production processes and begin investment programs for new technology. Sales of accessories—robots, computer controls, and materials-handling systems—are expected to climb to $30 billion world-wide by 1996, compared with the 1982 total of $4 billion. * There is also much discussion about the feasibility of Japan's plans for a fifth generation of computers the danger of their outstripping us, and, in general, what the advent of robotics will do to the quality of life. Do you see the pervasive use of robots as a practical reality?

Robotics: Challenges to present-day technology: Robots must be produced in great numbers with more advanced capabilities, and we must lose our fear that they are taking over our jobs

Robots have received a great deal of publicity lately. The enormous influx of foreign cars manufactured in part by robots has aroused the awareness of the press and many politicians to the fact that robots can have a profound effect on industrial productivity. Many people today believe that the robot revolution is well under way, that factories are full of armies of these highly intelligent “steel-collar workers,” and that human workers are being displaced in droves. The facts are quite different.