At Geek.com there is an interesting article about a robot developed by Japanese scientists that could replace construction workers. As pointed out in the article the main motivation behind this HRP-5P is to deal with the country’s aging and declining population.

There are several reasons why this kind of robots are of great importance for space settlements. Building space habitats, mining of resources and so on, will require a lot of work. Through the use of robots more labor will be available and this will allow for much faster space development – especially if such robots can be assembled in space, which will further reduce launch costs.

Also, according to another article on Geek.com, a long-term exposure to cosmic radiation could lead to digestive problems. Robots do not suffer from radiation the same way as humans do, hence they could start building free space habitats while science works to devise methods to protect humans against cosmic rays.