Japan takes another step in replacing humans with robots

On kurzweilai, there is an article that talks about Japan creating a robot that will replace humans in repetitive manual labor. Their reasoning for these robots is

It is Japan's urgent task for the early 21st Century to develop robots that could carry out simple, repetitive works ... in a bid to complement the workforce in a country that is rapidly ageing with fewer and fewer children.

While that may be a reason, I feel that the robots will eventually be abused as companies will eventually be replace human workers with the robots. The only positions that the robot won't take over would be the ones that require higher knowledge.. and even then with time they might take those over as well.

As I read some of the posts made regarding the article, one of the posts made an interesting point where humans could buy the robots to send them to work while they stay at home and pursue different things. While this may be a interesting idea, it is still abuse of the robots and I feel would lead us down a path we see so often in movies and such.