Assembling and welding together gadgets like Apple’s iPhones and iPads is tedious, dull, low-paying work that even a robot can do. That’s why 1 million more robots will soon be on the job at Foxconn Technology Group’s factories in China.

“This is the kind of stuff that drives people crazy when they have to do it themselves, which leads to suicide, which is what the Foxconn people had a problem with,” Frank Tobe, owner and publisher of The Robot Report, which focuses on news and analysis of the robotics industry, told me today.