The research library

84 peer reviewed works on what automation actually does to firms and to the people in them. This is not a robotics literature dump. It is the economics and industrial engineering evidence that answers the questions our customers actually ask.

Most academic robotics is control theory, grasp planning and novel mechanisms, and none of it helps a forty person shop decide whether to automate a station. So we built the other library: does automation cost jobs, do smaller manufacturers see the same returns as large ones, what does the measured payback look like, and what happens to the operator. Every entry links to the source so you can check us.

• Robots, jobs and wages 12 works

  The evidence on what automation does to employment, which is the question every owner is really asking and almost nobody in this industry answers with a citation.

• Automation in smaller manufacturers 12 works

  Adoption barriers, returns and failure modes specific to small and midsized firms, which behave nothing like the large plants most robotics research studies.

• Productivity, payback and what actually pays 12 works

  Measured outcomes rather than vendor projections: productivity effects, investment appraisal, and the gap between the two.

• Line balancing, scheduling and the math Joe runs 12 works

  The operations research underneath the concierge's quiet math: assembly line balancing, task allocation between people and robots, and cycle time under real constraints.

• Reliability, availability and OEE 12 works

  Why a line of 98 percent machines is not a 98 percent line, and what the literature says about maintaining automated cells.

• Working alongside the machine 12 works

  Human robot collaboration as it is actually experienced on a floor: safety, trust, workload and what happens to the operator's job.

• Skills, training and redeployment 12 works

  What the evidence says about retraining the people already on the floor, which is the manifesto's central claim and one we should be held to.

Metadata and abstracts come from OpenAlex under CC0, harvested 2026-08-23. We did not write the abstracts and we have not characterized anyone's findings. Joe can search this library mid conversation and cite what he finds, and he is instructed never to cite anything that is not in it.