Robots are cheap, the main ingredient is mental. This is something our post industrial cottage industry can do very well. There might not be any mass manufacture of robots. Each robot would be custom, even if the chassis is multipurpose.
No, I dissagree. If each robot is custom than it is nothing more than a machine.
There will be a variety of robots, but we need to get to where the robots are mass produced and have enough flexibility that they can be programmed for a variety of tasks.
Only then, once there are a large number of programmers working with similar robots, will robotic programming languages take off and develop the kind of indepth functionality that will really allow robots to be programmed for complex tasks using high level lanquages.
In other words we need to get away from the idea of a $500,000 custom designed and programed robot and get to a $15,000 multipurpose robot with a variety of interfaces and attachments. Only then will robotics really soar.
We also need to identify some of the largest unskilled worker sectors and target them for automation. Again this will result in labor dislocation but it is the type of market that can really drive robotics.
And I've said it before, I'll say it again. If we automate driving, it frees the elderly, our youth, parents of youth. It eliminates or drastically reduces automobile wrecks, automobile injuries, car insurance, injury lawyers, speeding tickets, etc. The boon to the economy of freed time would be immense. This too will cause labor dislocations, but real productivity after waste would soar.