[mikepurvis]

> program a new task which requires software testing and engineers

To be fair, Rethink did understand this part, and part of their pitch was that it was supposed to be easy to teach their robots tasks with a kind of observe/repeat flow; here's a video from way back in 2012 showing where they were trying to go with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXOkWuSCkRI

They're not the only ones either, UR has also placed a heavy emphasis on safety and ease of task training, though unlike Rethink, I don't believe their systems come with any built-in sensing, so it really is limited to just mindlessly repeating exactly what you show it: https://www.universal-robots.com/academy/