Meet the robots that could soon take your job – from baristas to hospital staff

THE future’s employable robots that could be taking jobs from hospital workers and baristas have been unearthed at CES.

Both underpaid and unstaff-able positions have been overrun by our technological counterparts.

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Thanks to robotic startup XYZ, jobs that the human race has taken for granted may, for better and for worse, may no longer be available at our disposal.

There are about eight coffee shops in South Korea solely run by the use of XYZ’s robot ‘X EXPRESS, powered by a programmable, autonomous arm.

“We are currently opening these and operating them ourselves,” Byung Jo Kim, the COO of XYZ, told The U.S. Sun.

For the “short-term, we are operating just by ourselves. But, in the long term…we’re going to think about expanding to other coffee brands like Starbucks…”

However, automaton coffee is only the beginning of the robotically-employed story.

At the beginning of their journey up until present, “we’re focusing on intelligence. Intellectuals. So, the first step was the coffee, but now we’re gonna try and expand into other areas like serving within the site of buildings and stuff like that.”

Thinking on their intelligence developments, Kim introduced their other branch of robots, ones that resemble storage containers and deliver goods from one point to another.

“That’s the reason why we have these robots specializing in delivery,” he said of the autonomus driving STORAGY.

“Say a customer works at the seventh floor in the office…orders a coffee. Then this STORAGY will deliver it to the seventh floor.”

AUTOMATED FIELD

“We are also trying to expand our operations into hospitals or hotels. Using the same logic from the first floor with the storage, you can have your items delivered to different levels in the building,” he said.

“A lot of these stores are having a hard time finding employees. So we are actually providing these robots…so the store owners can operate. We’re actually lacking the human power.”

While AI art has made waves on the internet for its threat to human creation, at the moment, the human replacement is mostly done for “simple tasks. Simple, repeating tasks a lot of people are not willing to do,” Kim explained.

“We’re just replacing them with these robots,” he said, claiming a similar job market situation rests on both the United States and South Korea.

“During COVID, lots of foreign employees were sent back to their countries. So, they couldn’t find their replacements.”

The hot fields needing the autonomous kind of help was hotels and hospitals.

Kim said part of the issue may be a generational one: millenials and Gen-Z very much want to create their own start-ups, or a do a job with a sort of specialty, not necessarily a one-function gig that a robot could do faster and with more ease.

Robots are also near tireless, providing 24-hour labor.

With the menial jobs out of the way, Kim believes that this leaves room for better quality jobs in the human market.

XYZ is also in talks with the Korean branch of Tesla to create automated charging stations in their market, perhaps even ones where a robot-made coffee can be purchased.

AUTOMIC DOG

Under the same large booth as XYZ was a cute-yet-creepy robotic dog, akin to that of the Mechanic Hound in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

With the same surveillance capabilities as the fictional robodog, Spot seemed a lot friendlier as it roamed around the conference space, taking heavy, audible steps, sitting and even laying down on command.

It was engineered by Boston Dynamics, and Hyundai acquired the entire robotics company — and their little dog too.

While it has limitless potential, able to do everything from basic surveillance to assembly line detection, the reason why it was brought to the show was “just for fun,” according to company representative Christine Han Choi.

Choi spoke on behalf of Hyundai’s umbrella of startups called ZERO1NE, which both funds and acquires startups to support and gain the genius creations behind their inventions.

“There’s a lot of applications to link the cars and the robots,” she said of Hyundai acquiring an elaborate robotics company such as Boston Dynamics.

“They can be guiding robots for people with disabilities. Maybe they can go into the car with the customers and guide them to wherever they want to go. There’s so many applications with that, not just with automotive…

“We’re also using Spots to, you know, move around the factory lines or manufacturing line to detect any quality issues or any, like, dangers, because you can put a camera on top of Spots.”

No matter the newer use of the robotics, it all narrows into an unexpected twist on the known, even familiarities like vehicles.

“The car is basically robots now. You know the car is kind of transforming now. It’s just not a car anymore. It’s really a robot that’s on the road, running around.”