Robot society draws near, researcher says at GMIC

"A robot society will be established in the very near future," said Hiroshi Ishiguro, an international researcher on robotics and director of the Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories at Japanese Osaka University on Tuesday during the ongoing 2015 Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing. Hiroshi Ishiguro, right, director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, remote-controls the humanoid robot Android Yang Yang at its world premiere during the 2015 Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, China, 28 April 2015. An essay written by Rhett Allain, associate professor of physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, on WIRED magazine in January pointed out that "robotification", the process by which tasks normally performed by humans are replaced with machines of some kind, has already started as human beings have been surrounded by robots such as Automated Teller Machines, robot arms in car factories, self-checkout at grocery stores and self-driving cars. Other robot manufacturers such as Taiwan based education robot maker GeStream Technology Inc, Beijing based companion robot maker Ainemo Inc and Shenzhen based industry robot maker UBTECH have also joined the conference named "mobile everything" to showcase their newly launched products.