In good hands: the robots taking our jobs, with a human touch

Baxter and Sawyer are designed to collaborate with people, performing a range of repetitive jobs - but for some tasks there are no tools better than human hands

As humans battle with the idea that many of our jobs will be replaced by robots, we should be grateful that our hands are so capable. Our fleshy paws have evolved to perform such a complex range of actions that, for at least a range of tasks, robots simply can't compete. At least for now.

"We still have not made much progress on making dexterous hands for robots," said Rodney Brooks, the chief executive of Rethink Robotics, speaking at the Quartz event The Next Billion in San Francisco.