Are human employees happier when they have robots bossing them around? Yes, says a controversial study.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) said tasks controlled by robots lead to greater work efficiency among humans.

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Robots also helped people better understand their robot counterparts.

MIT's study aimed to look at how humans react when given tasks by an automated scheduling algorithm.

The study involved 24 human participants and paired two humans to one robot.

There were three different conditions where they worked together: a manual condition where humans assigned all tasks; a fully autonomous condition where robots assigned all the tasks and semi-autonomous conditions where one human gave tasks to himself and the robot gave tasks to the other human.

Results showed the fully autonomous condition was favorable to human workers and effective for the task, as well.

"We found that humans preferred working with the robot that had more control over scheduling decisions. Subjects felt that the autonomous robot better understood them," said Matthew Gombolay, project leader and a Ph.D. student at CSAIL.

Researchers are also looking for ways to incorporate robot workers in factory areas. This will show humans they're not being undervalued .

"In our research, we were seeking to find that sweet spot for ensuring that the human workforce is both satisfied and productive," said Gombolay.

Gombolay said that understanding how to gain support from the human workers that will benefit from this technology is essential.

Full-fledged autonomy doesn't mean giving full control to robots, however.

Humans still delegate and schedule the tasks robots carry out via a "human-generated  algorithm."

These findings seem to point out one thing: humans are willing to be supervised by robot overlords.

TagsMIT, humans