It's Monday morning, December
15, 2036. An autonomous vehicle
drops off two engineers in front of a gear manufacturing facility in Metro Detroit. They punch in for work on their wristwatches and pay Uber for the ride on a smartphone. One of the engineers begins walking the shop floor, monitoring a series of collaborative robots using a tablet
the size of a paperback novel. These
robots interact right on the floor with
the minimal staff scheduled to oversee
manufacturing operations. Another
engineer wears an interactive headset
and begins training a group of new engineers (in real time) from China using some form of augmented reality.