I was picturing small Wall-E robots with drills and jack hammers, or primitive versions of those mining droids from KotOR.

When economics are the way they are nowadays, the world don't need robots to replace human workers and increase unemployment. But robots can be very useful when clearing areas of land mines, and other life threatening jobs.

Robots, yes, but as tender as Wall-e or as clever as C3-PO or R2-D2 , please .....

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008, Lord Harald wrote, "the world don't need robots to replace human workers and increase unemployment"

You are right about robots taking more and more jobs away from humans. But the answer isn't to stop making robots. The answer is to move away from an economy based on human labor to an economy based on machine labor. This is a totally new thing! No one really knows what an economy based on machine labor will look like.

Do you have any ideas on what an economy based on machine labor will look like?