Globalisation
I have some familiarity with industrial automation, especially in the automotive market. Robots have been working in factories in the auto industry for longer than many of the readers of this web site have been alive.
They're nothing special though, they're just another tool in an automation designer's toolbox. Most automation doesn't involve robots. The objective is to automate production - in other words, replace labour. There are many ways of doing this, often a custom built bit of tooling, motors, and cylinders does the job faster, and more cheaply and efficiently than a robot. There's not even global agreement on what constitutes a robot.
Robots and automation in general are not what is depressing wages in western countries. What is doing that is outsourcing to low wage third world countries where cheap labour replaces expensive robots.
I've seen this a number of times. A company will spend a decade automating to reduce costs, achieving an efficient 24/7 operation. They then spend the next decade moving production of new products to China or Mexico where they can reduce capital costs by not having to spend so much on automation. In other words, they do a complete reverse course and go from high tech to low tech on the basis of reducing capital expenditure and replace robots with third world labour. Very often the building and labour is provided by a contractor, so they technically have no head count other than the head office staff (and what's left of their product designers after they've taken the chainsaw to them as well).
The globalisation process has gone so far in many western countries that people who are panicking about "robots" being responsible for "killing jobs" are at least 15 years too late.
If you want to panic about something, panic about the "Ubers" of the world who plan on reducing everyone to a "race to the bottom" temp worker.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
