The most versatile assembly-line robot yet has just been unveiled, and unlike the hulking machines we’ve seen inside modern factories, this one almost looks human. With two dexterous arms and wrists that can spin 720 degrees, the robot is built to efficiently perform precision tasks in electronics manufacturing alongside human assembly workers. It’s called FRIDA — Friendly Robot for Industrial Dual-arm Assembly — and it was built by the Swiss company ABB.

IEEE Spectrum has more on how the robot works:

Designed for assembly applications, FRIDA is capable of using its human-like arms to grasp and manipulate electronic components and other small parts. The machine is a concept robot that ABB created to show off its vision for a new kind of industrial robot … Traditional industrial robots are big, expensive, and hard to integrate into existing manufacturing processes. They’re also difficult to reprogram when production changes become necessary and they can’t safely share spaces with human workers. This barrier to entry has kept small and medium companies “robot-less” — at a time when robots, more than ever, could boost productivity and ameliorate labor shortages.

Here’s a look at the robot in action:

It’s neat technology, to be sure. But you can’t help but cringe when robots like this are described as helping to ‘ameliorate’ or ‘alleviate’ labor shortages — technologies like this, if implemented, are sure to displace workers (despite the claims to the contrary of the company, which says it’s merely designed to assist them). And some would argue that letting robots man the unpleasant working environs of factories is a good thing, and techno-utopianists argue that the day will come when robots do all of our manual labor for us. But you can be sure that any large scale adoption of such robots across a manufacturing sector would at the very least punch a void into the global workforce, potentially leaving millions of workers unemployed. And I don’t even want to think about how much more energy it would to take to power the worldwide manufacturing sector with machines …

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Images: ABB