Our world is changing rapidly and few technologies embody this change so fully as the field of robotics. While industrial robots have been with us for decades, most of these are designed to perform highly defined and repetitive actions in factories. But in recent years, we’ve begun to see a growing ecology of robotic systems capable of performing actions previously limited to human workers. This was very evident at the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society conference (ICRA 2015) which was held at the Washington State Convention Center from May 25-30, 2015.

With over two thousand attendees from around the world, ICRA boasted an extensive program. Vendors filled the main hall displaying everything from vision systems to adaptive claws and grippers to hovering drones. Several mornings began with a plenary talk by a leader in the field. Dozens of professional sessions explored technical topics for the researchers and scientists in attendance. And there were robots. Lots and lots of robots.

One of the best ways to see these robots in action was at one of several challenges that took place during the week. In the Amazon Picking Challenge for example, 28 teams attempted to autonomously identify and pick specific items from among several bins and place them in a waiting container. As often happens with such technology challenges, one team stood out from the crowd. With a score of 148 points, Team RBO from Technical University of Berlin blew past the competition to take 1st Place. They were followed by Team MIT with 88 points and Team Grizzly from Michigan’s Oakland University with 35 points. This sped-up video shows RBO’s winning performance:

According to MIT Technology Review, Amazon already has 15,000 robots working in its warehouses, mostly to move product around. While the robots in this challenge won’t be replacing the humans who pick products from bins anytime soon, the competition clearly demonstrates the writing is on the wall. Of course, once such a technology exists, Amazon will hardly be the only company wanting to use it.

In addition to the Picking Challenge, there were several others:

• The First Challenge on Formal Methods for Robotics
• Humanitarian Robotics and Automation Technology Challenge
• Humanoids Application Challenge
• IEEE RAS Micro/Nano Robotics & Automation (MNRA) Technical Committee Mobile Microrobotics Challenge

The conference also had its first ever career fair, numerous forums and special events, award ceremonies, and several social networking events.

As if all this wasn’t enough, ICRA 2015 acknowledged an industry milestone with its celebration of the 50th anniversary of the famous Shakey project. In 1965, Shakey was a Stanford Research Institute robot that in many ways set the stage for today’s robotics and AI research. Shakey is considered the world’s first general-purpose mobile robot capable of analyzing its own instructions and breaking them down without needing to be instructed step by step. The Shakey project pioneered many methods and algorithms that continue to impact the fields of robotics and computer science to this day.

While all of this demonstrates how far robotics has come, it’s also clear it has much further to go. To a general public raised on science fiction expectations, many of these robots and systems may seem slow, even rudimentary. But this is a field that is developing very rapidly, perhaps more rapidly than at any time in its history. As various technical challenges are met and overcome, what is learned will be incorporated into future robotic designs leading to ever-increasing speed and accuracy. As books like “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future” (by Martin Ford, Basic Books) have recently discussed, it may not be that many years before we see more and more of these systems replacing workers en masse across a wide range of tasks and jobs. It’s in our interest to recognize this and explore how we can balance the needs of industry and the people who work for them while there’s still time to influence the outcome.