Working from home has typically been the domain of so called white collar workers such as IT professionals. Not for long it seems.
Blue collar workers as they are known, such as factory workers could very soon find themselves sitting on the couch with their white collar brothers and sisters. The reason? Robots and Virtual Reality.
That’s right. If you thought robots would be taking over the factory jobs then you might want to think again. Sure, they are going to be on the production line doing the actual work, but it is still going to be humans controlling them…for now anyway.
A Virtual Reality headset is currently in production that would allow your typical factory worker to put it on in the morning, just like they were putting on their uniform, and then see everything the robot is looking at on the production line.
The factory worker contractor would then have the ability to control the robot from the comfort of their own home. If the television is on in the background it doesn’t matter, as long as the robot gets the job done.
I’m sure these Virtual Reality workers will even be able to control when the robots go for a tea break or even a quick snooze. Just don’t let the factory foreman find them or they could find themselves down the robot job centre.
Recent statistics show that when humans and robots work together in a factory setting through the power of Virtual Reality then tasks are done 57% faster than when humans or robots work on their own. Also, it was found that robots are 95% better at grasping objects when they have a human controlling them.
Even better, these robots can be controlled from hundreds of miles away by a Virtual Reality contractor, which means that you could potentially have a home worker in Glasgow controlling a robot worker in London.
It’s even possible that we could start to see international partnerships forming, where humans and robots from different countries pair up to work together
So do you even have to be an experienced factory worker to get into this whole Virtual Reality thing anyway? Apparently not, as research shows that the best candidates for the job are…video gamers.
The job advert could very well read – “work from home video gamers needed, to put on Virtual Reality headsets to control robot factory workers.”
I’m sure the advert would get a lot of replies, especially if the pay was good and you could do everything from the comfort of your sofa.
