Final Essay

Robotics in the workplace has seen recent strides across multiple businesses and industries. New technology has paved the way for new possibilities for the implementation of robotics in multiple fields. International Data Corp forecasts a growth of about $135 billion in the robotics industry by 2019 (Gaudin, 2016). There are a few factors that are causing new technology and machinery to become a more viable option that it was in the past. These factors are the main supporters of growth of the industry. The first comes from an increase in the cost of labor in the United States. Increasing minimum wages has led to a more expensive workforce. This shift has made robotics a more economically feasible solution than in the past. Payment for robotics is quickly out shadowing the costs of maintaining, training, and supporting employees in certain settings.

A main business unit that will see vast changes will be the use of robotics

The Department of Transportation is in charge of regulating shipping throughout the United States. Drivers are currently limited to operating a vehicle a maximum of fourteen hours per day. They are also required to take a minimum of thirty minutes break every eight hours of driving. This creates some issues with timelines if shipments are late or time critical. Drivers must be hired in teams in order to keep a shipment moving 24 hours around the clock which comes at increased costs. Self-driving trucks will eliminate many of these problems when it comes to restrictions on human capacity to complete shipping routes. A single truck can run for virtually twenty-four hours a day increasing the productivity of trucks with single drivers by an estimated 71%. This figure is looking strictly at time effectiveness. This does not even factor in increased revenue or reduced operations cost that the efficiency would bring to a