In Styx’s 1983 hit “Mr. Roboto,” the band sings, “Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto; For doing the jobs that nobody wants to.” Little did the band know, robots eventually would take on an immense amount of jobs that warehouse workers find repetitive and boring.
Although the sci-fi robots depicted in the music video are more similar to the Cybermen in a late 1960s episode of “Doctor Who” than the reality of robots, in 1983, the thought of widespread use of robots was far in the distance. Today, however, robots are setting records. Ann Arbor, Mich.-based the Robotics Industries Association (RIA) released a report in August stating that the North American robotics market had its fastest start ever in the first half of 2015.