We could automate many jobs with existing technology -- pilots, truck drivers, locomotive drivers, mailmen (just use drones), farmers (hydroponic greenscrapers). In Paris, they tested automated Metro trains which worked flawlessly, but the trade unions luddited the robots away, because they'd have killed the jobs of human drivers. The Nuremberg subway service just said "fuck it" and automated anyway. We'll have to figure out how to deal with robots eating up jobs on a grand scale; Basic Income is often suggested, but at the moment it still seems to be out of reach for most economies; in Germany you'd need about 1000 billion € annually, which is more than the entire German tax revenue. With new technologies, such as Very High Temperature Molten Salt Reactors, plasma arc material processing or nanomachines giving a boost to economies, luxuries such as Basic Income may become viable.
For completely automated production cycles, some breakthroughs in (soft) artificial intelligence are still needed. They may be decades away, maybe even 100 years, I don't know. Fully automated production is still utopian, but I think it is a goal well worth working towards. Capitalism is most efficient at creating such technologies, so currently it is the way to go. It's not the best system imaginable, but holds the greatest promise of improving the human situation and evolving into a better system as time progresses.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q6cN-1dLoPY