With the economy being as bad as it is, it may become even harder to find a job come January 28th when the HRP-4 becomes available to consumers. The humanoid robot, developed by Tokyo-based Kawada Industries and Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Sciences and Technology, is programmed to deliver mail, pour coffee, and recognize its co-workers' faces. Bill Gates predicted that the future would bring a "robot in every home." In the foreseeable future, though, it may be a robot in every cubicle or at least every third cubicle. This potential for duplicity may be even more alarming to human employees who might one day lose their jobs to a gang of Wall-E doppelgangers. Yet Smart Robots' Bosworth insists that the rise of ever-more sophisticated robots offers a sliver of hope to minions everywhere. "Technology makes jobs, it doesn't do away with jobs," he says. Bosworth points to the invention of the television, which created a new industry in television repair. He predicts that there's a fortune to be made in preventive robot maintenance. This isn't the best news for those with bigger career ambitions than being grease monkeys for robots. Initial customers for the HRP-4 will be research institutions and universities, but with an official price tag of $350,000 don’t count on being replaced at your job just yet.
Zero
