[gene-h]

Personally I think we'll see these tasks automated after we automate surgery. The value added accomplishing these tasks is low, the cost of robots is high, and the difficulty of a robot doing them is high. It is difficult for robots to manipulate things autonomously, doubly so for flexible objects, and all these tasks require manipulation of flexible objects. Indeed the reason why Creator's robot dispenses burgers in two halves might be that they do not have the manipulation capability to do so. Maneuvering a flexible bun on to a flexible stack of meat and vegetables without damaging the bun or spilling ingredients is very hard. Surgery also involves unstructured inputs and manipulation of flexible objects and manipulation also involves the cutting and sewing of said objects among other things. This makes surgery just as difficult as these tasks, but the value added is much greater. We can now get away with selling a few very expensive robots rather than a large amount of moderately priced ones.