There are 6.3 robots working in Grand Rapids for every 1000 humans employed at manufacturing jobs. It may not sound like much, but it's increasing every day.

Do you have a robot co-worker? 

In an in-depth study about the automation boom in American manufacturing by the Brookings Institute entitled 'Where The Robots Are', it was revealed GR trails only Toledo and Detroit in the percentage of the workforce that are robots. That statistic is for only the top 100 cities in terms of population.

The use of robots in smaller towns is actually higher, with Elkhart IN leading the nation with close to 36 robots per thousand workers.

The number of robots on the job in GR tripled between 2010 and 2015, which is a pretty good representation of how the use of robots is increasing in manufacturing.

But working with robots is not all that much fun. In addition to taking jobs from humans, it appears robots are boring.

In the Grand Rapids subreddit on reddit.com, one person who works with robots put it this way:

When I was a kid if you told me I would be working with robots I would have been thrilled, today me though ? Yeah not so much. They don't walk, they don't talk, and they sure don't shoot lasers, all they do is pick up car parts and move them to a different location.

Which garnered this response:

Get them to open up a little. Maybe try this as an icebreaker: I've noticed you're really good at moving car parts from one place to another. You'll go places.

I'm not sure if the computer I have to work with daily with counts as a robotic co-worker, but he hates me and I hate him. He's lazy and has a bad attitude.

More From 100.5 FM The River