Why so much emphasis on robot automation, but not robot remote control?

Question

During this pandemic, and so many people working from home, except for essential workers, it made me wonder about why only some people can work from home. A lot of essential work is only essential because we can't yet build smart enough robots to do them autonomously, but why don't we consider building robots that are just dexterous enough to do those jobs, but are controlled by people working remotely?We have surgeons able to do surgery remotely with robots, which is a lot more complex, so it seems it should be possible to build robots that can do less complex labor controlled by a person. Plus, it would give us a chance to help address the high physical demands of some types of labor.

Nextgrid · Accepted Answer

I think one big factor is cost.A lot of the "essential" labor that you're talking about also happens to be really cheap labor. Developing a robotic replacement (even if it still requires remote control) would pay for years if not decades of low-wage labor, not to mention maintenance of the robots which will need to be done by relatively skilled (and thus costly) labor.