The article states that Anaina and Burke separately conducted their tests, but social robots [1] have been shown to be effective in individual tutoring. Human tutoring is not always better than a well-designed computer program [2]. There have been issues with how studies interpret their effect on group size / scalability [3].
The page lists the locations, and the businesses, where these jobs are placed. Unless you live on the coast (or end up in Denver/Austin), you're going to have a harder time reaching these salary numbers.
The author is pretty clear that having more than two modes diminishes the usefulness of the interface. Three modes was complex enough that he redesigned it down.
I've changed the channel tuner when I've reached for the volume knob. If the haptic feedback between the two is clearly different, that will help, no?
[1] https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/scirobotics.aat5954 [2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00461520.2011.61... [3] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X2091279...