The_Future_of_Employment

e compared (Churchill and Newman, 2012). ML approaches have also been
developed to identify unprecedented changes to a particular piece of the road
network, such as roadworks (Mathibela, et al., 2012). This emerging technology
will affect a variety of logistics jobs. Agricultural vehicles, forklifts
and cargo-handling vehicles are imminently automatable, and hospitals are already
employing autonomous robots to transport food, prescriptions and samples
(Bloss, 2011). The computerisation of mining vehicles is further being
pursued by companies such as Rio Tinto, seeking to replace labour in Australian
mine-sites. 18
With improved sensors, robots are capable of producing goods with higher
quality and reliability than human labour. For example, El Dulze, a Spanish
food processor, now uses robotics to pick up heads of lettuce from a conveyor
belt, rejecting heads that do not comply with company standards. This
is achieved by measuring their density and replacing them on the belt (IFR,
2012a). Advanced sensors further allow robots to recognise patterns. Baxter, a
22,000 USD general-purpose robot, provides a well-known example. The robot
features an LCD display screen displaying a pair of eyes that take on different
expressions depending on the situation. When the robot is first installed or
needs to learn a new pattern, no programming is required. A human worker
simply guides the robot arms through the motions that will be needed for the
task. Baxter then memorises these patterns and can communicate that it has understood
its new instructions. While the physical flexibility of Baxter is limited
to performing simple operations such as picking up objects and moving them,
different standard attachments can be installed on its arms, allowing Baxter to
perform a relatively broad scope of manual tasks at low cost (MGI, 2013).
Technological advances are contributing to declining costs in robotics. Over
the past decades, robot prices have fallen about 10 percent annually and are
expected to decline at an even faster pace in the near future (MGI, 2013). Industrial
robots, with features enabled by machine vision and high-precision
dexterity, which typically cost 100,000 to 150,000 USD, will be available for
50,000 to 75,000 USD in the next decade, with higher levels of intelligence
and additional capabilities (IFR, 2012b). Declining robot prices will inevitably
place them within reach of more users. For example, in China, employers are
18 Rio Tinto’s computerisation efforts are advertised at http://www.mineofthefuture.com.au.
21