As our lives become more automated, the consumer robotics industry is only set to grow. But something is holding the market back – people find it difficult to trust these machines, especially in their homes and offices. Why do they make us uneasy, and what will convince people to trust robots?

From UberEATS to Deliveroo, on-demand food delivery services are part of an increasingly competitive market. In Australia, the pizza restaurant and takeaway market reached $4 billion in 2015, and the country's biggest chain, Domino’s, is now set to deliver pizza by robot.

In an age where immediate assistance is always just a tap away, waiting for a sales assistant to finish dealing with another customer can lead some to leave a shop. Could Benebot – a shop assistant robot designed by Ecovacs Robotics – solve this familiar inconvenience?

It's part of human nature to empathise with another person if we can see they're in pain. As robots become more prominent in our lives, could our empathy spread to androids, too? The results of a study from Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan suggest it could.