I don't see how this will work in 3 years time. Cheap robots today (<100K) suck at manual dexterity tasks. It took quite a lot of work to get a PR2 to fold laun

I don't see how this will work in 3 years time. Cheap robots today (<100K) suck at manual dexterity tasks. It took quite a lot of work to get a PR2 to fold laundry (and some of the best robotics people in the world worked on this). The kinds of tasks I imagined Foxconn workers performed all require significant manual dexterity. For an amazing use of robots in a factory environment, I would suggest a tour of BMW's Munich factory. They have a whole bunch of specialized robotic arms that do things like welding, lifting, painting, etc. Their factory still employs humans (albeit fewer humans). In BMW's case, their use of robotics makes sense. Foxconn, not so much. Finally, there are some completely automated car factories. I thought Hyundai's US factory manufactured cars solely with robots. However, I believe they have a higher defect rate (partially due to this process). Edit: Link to the PR2 laundry folding robot - http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2010/04/02/towels-uc-berkeley http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2010/04/02/towels-uc-berkel...