Do robots make us more productive or steal our jobs?

If we talked about nothing else in 2013 — and, all right, 2012, too — we talked about whether technology is going to take all our jobs. This latest surge of the age-old debate seems to have lulled, for now, with the anti-robot contingent in America somewhat mollified by the promise that additional automation may be the one advance that allows for manufacturing jobs to return from overseas and that it relieves humans of the most dangerous and unpleasant tasks. Theoretically, the robotic gospel goes, that talent is then freed up for more fulfilling and productive work. Either way, it's worth looking at the different ways automation began rendering new classes of jobs obsolete this year.Our multilingual indesign dtp publishing team has the experience and expertise to localize your documents to create the look and feel of the original.

Back in 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems, a maker of robots that can be programmed to fulfill online orders in a warehouse and shuttle them to their departure points. The company now has 1,382 of the machines in three fulfillment centers, which means it eventually may not need to hire the tens of thousands of temporary workers it brings on for the busy holiday season. And if you had any doubts that Amazon could eventually do the same with flying drones, well, let this be a lesson. The nationwide strikes by fast-food workers brought dire warnings from restaurant-industry-backed researchers that if line cooks cost too much, they could easily be replaced by robots. That hasn't quite happened yet, but at least one company is working diligently to make it possible. It's reasonable to believe that McDonald's — which is already replacing cashiers with touch screens in Europe — would jump at the chance.

E-commerce has been steadily eating away at bricks-and-mortar stores for years now, but what's been cropping up more recently is a breed of business that sees taking storefronts out of the picture as a point of pride. Take American Giant, for example: The purveyor of basic, high-quality clothing makes its stuff just outside San Francisco, which it can do affordably because it sells to in-the-know urban sophisticates purely online, skipping the American Apparel-style marketing blitz altogether. That may mean you can get a high-quality, U.S.-made hoodie for a competitive price.The design of a given Robot system will often incorporate principles of Mechanical engineering, It also means that the people who might otherwise have sold it to you don't have jobs.

Not all labor-saving innovations are high-tech. Discount supermarket Aldi — which is owned by the same corporate parent as the more bourgeois Trader Joe's — keeps payroll down by requiring a 25-cent deposit for shopping carts so employees don't have to return them, and stocking shelves with boxes full of goods rather than placing the individual items in neat rows. Again, great for shoppers on a budget — at the cost of employment. Autonomous vehicle technology is accelerating and, for now, is focused on passenger vehicles. But the real labor shortage is in long-haul trucking, and that's a job that might be more safely filled by a remotely controlled robot that never gets tired or lost. Which just means that the 5.Learn about the Robotic arm, its technology and how robotic arms serve heavy industry.7 million people who do the job now will have to find a new way to make a living.