The question of technological unemployment – namely whether technological change has the potential to cause massive job losses with robots making workers redundant – has been under intense scrutiny during recent years. Automation, which is an essential part of the wider “Industry 4.0” concept and the Next Production Revolution, has the aim of enabling production processes and procedures requiring minimal human intervention through use of technologies such as robotics. In turn, the field of robotics has in recent decades leveraged on a number of breakthroughs in related technological fields, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), increasingly acquiring the connotation of a pervasive technology.

This work aims to inform the discussion about developments in robotics substituting workers or otherwise complementing human activities.