Will your next home be built by robots? We’ll look at the growing robot boom and American jobs.

This show originally aired on May 8, 2017.

In this March 14, 2014 file photo, automated robots build a 2015 Chrysler 200 at the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in Sterling Heights, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

The robots just keep coming. Each generation more deft and capable than the last. The latest headline: Will your next home be built by robots? Maybe so. Robotics are moving into all kinds of fields. Factories, yes. But well beyond now, to work sites, offices, homes. Robots are sensing and seeing the world ever great clarity. And being deployed into ever more roles. Will they put on your next deck? Fill your next cavity? This hour, On Point: Robots. The jobs they’re doing. The jobs they’ll do next. — Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Charlie Wood, reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. (@walkingthedot)

Howie Choset, professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University.

Ken Goldberg, professor of industrial engineering and operations research in robotics, automation and new media at the University of California, Berkeley. (@ken_goldberg)

Claire Cain Miller, correspondent for the New York Times, covering gender, families and the future of work for the Upshot. (@clairecm)

From Tom's Reading List

Christian Science Monitor: Will your next home be built by robots? — "This Jetsons-like vision of an automated future has come largely true for car manufacturing. Now engineers hope buildings will be next. From Apis Cor’s 3-D printed house to the MIT Media Lab’s new multipurpose robotic arm, startups and research teams alike aim to spark a digital revolution in an analog industry that has thus far proved resistant to disruption."

TechCrunch: Abundant Robotics rakes in $10 million for apple harvesting robots — "While pessimists see robots as 'bad for jobs' in agriculture, robots could be a critical means of increasing food production while keeping costs, and the environmental impacts of farming, as low as possible."

New York Times: How to Prepare for an Automated Future -- "Consider it part of your job description to keep learning, many respondents said — learn new skills on the job, take classes, teach yourself new things. Focus on learning how to do tasks that still need humans, said Judith Donath of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society: teaching and caregiving; building and repairing; and researching and evaluating."