New England Board of Higher Education's Commission on Higher Education & Employability has thought hard over the past year about the increasing role of artificial intelligence and robotics in the future of life and work. Many others are also waking up to this landscape, which not so long ago seemed like science fiction. Machines have changed…

The development of telerobotic systems has evolved from Single Operator Single Robot (SOSR) systems to Multiple Operator Multiple Robot (MOMR) systems. The relationship between human operators and robots follows the master-slave control architecture and the requests for controlling robot actuation are completely generated by human operators. …

The new mechanism, PUSS, enables experience of any complex environment to be accumulated in a predictive model. PURR-PUSS is a teachable robot system based on the new mechanism. Cumulative learning is demonstrated by a detailed example. (Author)

Noting that work is partly a social activity, and that workers' psychological and emotional needs influence their productivity, this paper explores avenues for improving human-robot cooperation and for enhancing worker satisfaction in the environment of flexible automation. The first section of the paper offers a brief overview of the…