It seems that the growth curve for this type of "employment" is quite steep as the robot workers population is expected to rise to 1.2 million by 2011.
The actual situation sees already 1 million robots employed in a wide range of industry realities.
As one could expect the leading countries are Japan, Singapore and South Korea but, quite surprisingly, Europe countries -Germany, Sweden and Italy mainly- keep the pace and the region is that with the highest machine/worker ratio (50/10K).
International Federation of Robotics takes also in consideration service robots for personal and professional use. The 2008 summary report estimates an increase of 54K new units of professional robots (defense&security, medical, logistic, etc..) for the 2008-2011 period.Personal use (consumer) robots will grow of about 12.1 million units. Robots belonging to this class are much more commonly spread than the professional and industrial ones. Their field of operation varies from domestic robots (vacuum cleaning, lawn-mowing, window cleaning, and so on) to entertainment and leisure robots (toy robots).
How will the balance of humans and machine influence and shape the increansingly interconnecting relation between orga and mecha? How will our society react to the progressive invasive movement of more and more sophisticated machines in fields that were -and still are- monopoly of humans? It's just behind the corner the day when robots will take care of our elders or disabled people, perform many low and -I foreseen- medium end jobs, look after our children and perform as erotic companions. How will all this influence the human-to-human relations? It's difficult to precisely foreseen such a future but I'm sure machines -not just robots- will continue to change life and society as we know it.
Illustration: Mike Vella
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