Read later Summary: The year in which robots were still on the rise, but the mainstream media revolution never arrived...but there's always 2021. While COVID-19 tore up cities like a microbial Godzilla, the potential of robots to automate a range of essential industries, such manufacturing, agriculture, and energy, began to look more like a key to human survival than a threat to our jobs and existence. Meanwhile Artificial Intelligence (AI) offered a means of finding new solutions quickly, or giving intractable social problems a veneer of digital neutrality. Both views held fast in 2020. Robots can already run lights-out factories, manufacturing goods 24/7, 365 days a year. They can help run and maintain warehouses and keep orders moving. Robots can pick fruit, harvest crops, help irrigate fields, and – with the aid of drones and sensors – get fertiliser to where it needs to go. All of these things are currently a problem for humans in a locked-down world. AI-infused vertical smart farms are already bringing crops into brownfield sites in cities, closer to the mouths that need feeding.