A report by McKinsey Global Institute called “A Future That Works: Automation, Employment, and Productivity” predicts that nearly half of work tasks will be performed by some form of a robot by the year 2055. AI agents will automate any kind of job that is repetitive on various levels.

麦肯锡全球研究所的一份名为“工作的未来：自动化，就业和生产力 ”的报告预测，到2055年，几乎一半的工作任务将由某种形式的机器人完成。在各个级别上都是重复的。

I genuinely believe that. Not only repetitive tasks will be automated but also creative ones, as we can judge by recent breakthroughs in text understanding.

我真的相信。 我们可以根据文本理解方面的最新突破来判断，不仅重复性任务会自动执行，而且创造性的任务也可以自动执行。

什么是RPA或机器人过程自动化？ (What is RPA or Robotic Process Automation?)

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software is a fundamental piece of automation. RPA, at its core, is just an approach to automating business processes through the deployment of bots or AI. It dates back to the 90s, and back then, it was a purely software engineering task of breaking down a process into smaller pieces and connecting various APIs to replace humans. For example, having to copy a particular text from one document to another and then sending it through email. Though useful, it was primarily concerned with boring, repetitive tasks that could be automated by writing ‘if-then’ instructions.

机器人过程自动化(RPA)软件是自动化的基础。 RPA的核心只是通过部署bot或AI来自动化业务流程的一种方法。 它可以追溯到90年代，那时，它是一个纯粹的软件工程任务，它将一个过程分解成较小的部分，并连接各种API来代替人类。 例如，必须将特定文本从一个文档复制到另一个文档，然后通过电子邮件发送。 尽管有用，但它主要涉及无聊的重复性任务，这些任务可以通过编写“ if-then”指令自动执行。

Everything changed with the advent of AI. Now software is able to deal with anomalies, previously unseen cases, and make a decision for itself on the spot. Enhanced with text understanding algorithms RPA software is capable of taking upon more complex business process and don’t need to be always guided by human labeling of every possible scenario. We’re entering a new age of automation. We should expect even more disruption once reinforcement learning methods will be implemented within RPA software, which would allow for automating entire office jobs.

随着AI的出现，一切都发生了变化。 现在，软件可以处理异常情况，以前看不见的情况，并可以当场做出决定。 通过文本理解算法进行增强，RPA软件能够处理更复杂的业务流程，而不必总是以人工标记所有可能的情况为指导。 我们正在进入自动化的新时代。 一旦在RPA软件中实施了强化学习方法，我们将期待更多的中断，这将使整个办公室工作自动化。

最受欢迎的RPA解决方案 (Most Popular RPA Solutions)

Let’s review the most popular RPA solutions on the market right now. Most of the companies have been around for over 10 years and became quite mature organisations.

现在让我们回顾一下市场上最受欢迎的RPA解决方案 。 大多数公司已经存在了十多年，并且已经成为相当成熟的组织。

Automation Anywhere empowers people to focus on the work that makes their companies great with robotic process automation that automates virtually anything. Automation Anywhere operates a Bot Store — a marketplace for pre-existent bots suited for different roles. These “Digital Workers” are given job titles by the company, for example, “Digital Employee Onboarding Specialist” with tasks such as identify, shortlist, and onboard candidates. Originally founded in 2003 as Tethys Solutions, the company acquired its current name in 2010, emphasising its focus on robotic process automation.

Automation Anywhere使人们能够专注于使他们的公司出色的工作，而机器人过程自动化几乎可以使任何事情实现自动化。 Automation Anywhere运营着一个Bot Store，这是一个适合不同角色的既有机器人的市场。 公司为这些“数字工作者”赋予了职务，例如“数字雇员入职专家”，其职责包括识别，候选清单和入职候选人。 该公司最初成立于2003年，当时名为Tethys Solutions，该公司于2010年获得现名，强调了对机器人过程自动化的关注。

Blue Prism is a UK RPA platform with customers like eBay, the NHS, and Walgreens. Its intelligent RPA platform comes in both on-premise and SaaS varieties (as most mature RPA solutions), working with the public sector, manufacturing, financial services, and beyond. Blue Prism has a drag-and-drop interface built around connectable objects containing actions and events, with a documented history of processes. The company was founded in 2001.

Blue Prism是英国RPA平台，拥有eBay，NHS和Walgreens等客户。 它的智能RPA平台包括本地和SaaS品种(作为最成熟的RPA解决方案)，可与公共部门，制造，金融服务及其他领域合作。 Blue Prism具有围绕包含动作和事件的可连接对象构建的拖放界面，并具有记录的过程历史记录。 该公司成立于2001年。

The digital workforce is built by the operational teams or accredited Blue Prism partners using their robotic process automation technology to rapidly build and deploy automations through leveraging the presentation layer of existing enterprise applications. The automations are configured and managed within an IT governed framework and operating model, which has been iteratively developed through numerous large scale and complex deployments.

数字化劳动力是由运营团队或经过认证的Blue Prism合作伙伴使用他们的机器人过程自动化技术构建的，以通过利用现有企业应用程序的表示层来快速构建和部署自动化。 自动化是在IT治理的框架和操作模型内配置和管理的，该框架和操作模型是通过大量大规模和复杂部署迭代开发的。

UiPath is an RPA company that offers a platform for automating repetitive manual tasks. Thanks to the ease of use for its automation designer, UiPath’s robots can operate with or without human supervision (help desks and call centers). Now based in New York, the company was founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 2005. The company raised $568 million in its latest Series D funding round and is one of the RPA giants with over $7 billion valuation.

UiPath是RPA公司，提供自动化重复性手动任务的平台。 由于自动化设计人员易于使用，UiPath的机器人可以在有或没有人为监督的情况下(帮助台和呼叫中心)进行操作。 该公司现位于纽约，于2005年在罗马尼亚布加勒斯特成立。该公司在最新D轮融资中筹集了5.68亿美元，是RPA巨头之一，其估值超过70亿美元。

SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation is a complete automation suite where software robots are designed to mimic humans by replacing manual clicks, interpreting text-heavy communications, or making process suggestions to end users for definable and repeatable business processes. SAP’s offering incorporates machine learning and conversational AI alongside RPA.

SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation是一套完整的自动化套件，其中的软件机器人旨在通过替换手动单击，解释大量文本通讯或为最终用户提供可定义和可重复的业务流程建议流程来模仿人类。 SAP的产品将机器学习和对话式AI与RPA结合在一起。

Other startups worth observing in RPA domain are:

在RPA域中值得关注的其他初创公司还有：

• WorkFusion,工作融合
• Pegasystems,Pegasystems，
• Cognizant.认识。

All of them are working on their proprietary software and heavily investing in AI. Large tech companies are also slowly entering the market, some of them like IBM collaborates with existing RPA providers (Automation Anywhere), others like Microsoft, try to develop their own set of tools.

他们所有人都在开发自己的专有软件，并大力投资AI。 大型科技公司也正在缓慢进入市场，其中一些公司(例如IBM)与现有RPA提供程序(Automation Anywhere)合作，其他公司(例如Microsoft)则尝试开发自己的工具集。

RPA市场的未来 (Future of RPA market)

Even though RPA companies are relatively big, there is still a place for newcomers. Startups looking to disrupt the RPA market should look towards reinforcement learning and recent breakthroughs in text processing. The space of RPA tools is big enough to welcome new players without stealing the business from established companies. Another potential direction for startups is to narrow down automation tools only to a particular business niche like law, logistics, or finance.

尽管RPA公司规模相对较大，但对于新手来说仍有地方。 希望扰乱RPA市场的初创企业应寻求加强学习和文本处理方面的最新突破。 RPA工具的空间足够大，可以欢迎新参与者，而不会从老牌公司那里窃取业务。 初创企业的另一个潜在方向是将自动化工具的范围缩小到法律，物流或金融等特定的业务领域。

Having said that, RPA is yet to grow immensely, thanks to progress in machine learning. Most RPA systems are legacy solutions compared to what is currently possible with machine learning.

话虽如此，由于机器学习的进步，RPA尚未得到巨大的发展。 与目前的机器学习相比，大多数RPA系统都是旧式解决方案。

This article is a part of my Artificial Intelligence Book: how you can profit from AI. You can buy my book either on:

本文是我的人工智能书的一部分：如何从AI中获利 。 您可以通过以下方式购买我的书：

• Amazon

  亚马孙

• AIBusinessBook.com

  AIBusinessBook.com