Running a company is hard- especially when you have incompetent workers to do the job. Well all that might be a thing of the past, thanks to advances in technology. No, we’re not talking about brainwashing people to be the most efficient workers possible (though that does sound like a great idea, although unethical) but we’re talking about robots. The HRP-4 is a 5-foot tall, humanoid robot developed in Tokyo, Japan; by Kawada Industries and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Sciences and Technology and is designed to perform the mundane tasks of an everyday office grunt. Deliver mail, pour coffee and recognizes faces of its co-workers. Granted it can’t perform regular tasks yet, the scientists behind this Robocop-ish looking robot are planning to let him take on secretarial roles in the future, and it can only go uphill from there. Costing about $350,000 it might make bosses think twice about hiring them, but the cost of maintaining one would be cheaper than paying off a worker who doesn’t do the job half as well, and wastes time on Facebook and unnecessary breaks. Can you see your office being run by robots in the future?
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