Across every one of our studied sites, however, this vision of robot-enabled, touchless work is a mirage. Plug-and-play technologies are often already in place to confer benefits like efficiency, quality, and analytics — and in those cases, there’s not much more social distance you can buy. And the systems that aren’t plug-and-play — those with robotic arms that can potentially handle pick-and-pack-style manipulation — are quite new and unproven.