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Plug-and-play automation systems can be rapidly set up to meet sudden surges in demand — and quickly reconfigured when needs change. 

Beane and Brynjolfsson discuss the need to work with robots especially with post-pandemic world. Whether you turn to news outlets, tech magazines, or academic sources for insight, you're likely to hear that the COVID-19 pandemic is going to drive massive growth in automation like robots. What's more, access to the technology is getting less expensive, with "robots as a service" models allowing companies to pay per touch rather than dipping into precious capital reserves. And robots are becoming more capable. In just the past few years, companies are building and selling AI-enabled robots to pick things out of bins, handle parts, tend machines, and test the latest electronics. This is impressive because it's high-mix work -- that is, the products, the work conditions, the processes, and the final output shift regularly but also in surprising ways. Until recently, this made automation via robotics a nonstarter, because previous approaches to things like object detection, grasp detection, and placement verification relied on stable products, conditions, processes, and outcomes. Robotics companies are also making similar advances in automating other physical jobs, such as materials transport, sorting, and palletizing.