In 2017, the world employed an estimated 20 million private security officers. But, robots can perform the same work as these humans at a cost of about 30 to 65 percent less. For the building security industry, Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) is the biggest automation threat to human workers so far.
One human managing a few remote robots can replace a building that once housed three to four people. The robots can collect and optimize data for about 30 percent less than humans. It’s the automation tipping point (ATP) for this market.
Security is just one of many markets that disrupted by RaaS. The service will soon impact crop dusting, industrial cleaning, and warehouse management, among others. A market hits its ATP when RaaS can conduct a task for less than its human counterparts. “We are at the start of a massive shift in how work gets done,” reports Venture Beat, adding that the changes will “deeply impact consumer markets, and ultimately society, in profound and potentially challenging ways.”
RaaS pushes physical jobs to robots and enables humans to focus on more challenging problems. As manual or repetitive labor shifts to machines, some jobs will disappear, others will change, and new types will be created. Society must focus on education and training as these jobs evolve.
How has RaaS impacted your livelihood?