In small factories across America, agile automatons are making everything from parts for AI supercomputers to the hulls of America’s future autonomous naval weapons. Once a luxury reserved for big manufacturers, smaller, smarter, more flexible and less expensive “cobots”—collaborative robots—are bringing automation to every fabricator, no matter the size. These robots aren’t just nice to have. The slow, fragile recovery of American goods production wouldn’t be possible without them. The number of U.S. companies that make physical things reached a low point in 2014 and has grown since then. Yet they are trapped in a never-ending labor shortage as skilled workers age out, and young people fail to take their place. China has become the de facto manufacturer of the world’s goods, owing not only to its enormous population of engineers, technicians and machinists but also its 2-million-plus army of industrial robots. Now the U.S. is attempting to claw back some of those contracts—a process called “reshoring”—and robots can in some cases quadruple worker output.

Full report : Robots that collaborate with humans, or “cobots”, are bringing automation to even the smallest US factories, as the US tries to reshore foreign manufacturing.