Robots Make the Coins Go 'Round, Down Under

inkslinger77 writes "Computerworld has a cool slideshow of a Kuka Titan robot and a bunch of AGVs managing the circulation of coins at the Australian Mint. There's also a lengthier article where the head of the project talks about the main reason robots were employed. One of the reasons being that they radically reduce OH&S risk: 'We are finding that the AGVs are much safer and more reliable. Robots are never affected by having a bad night with the baby and falling asleep at the wheel. They are extremely accurate and they always do the same task in the same way.'"

Comments

Hrmm

[acehole]

The Australian mint... where you can buy a $1 coin for $2 from a vending machine.

 

Re:Hrmm

[twostix]

Worse is buying a $5 dollar silver coin for 35 reserve bank $1 coins where 5 years ago it cost 8 reserve bank $1 coins...

Our money is becoming worthless.

Re:Hrmm

[TheLink]

BUT inflation aka printing money is a way for the Printer to tax the users of that currency.

It's all part of the plan.

You see the great thing for the USA is the rest of the world uses US dollars to buy and sell stuff like oil, and zillions of other commodities and products. Even amongst themselves. Because of that very many countries end up holding billions or even trillions of US dollars.

So when the US Federal Reserve lends[1] its friends X trillion US dollars ( and they only need to pay back 'later' when convenient), it's actually a way of taxing everyone else.

Now the US citizens should be happy if they get their share of the printed money as well, but if they don't they really should do something about it.

In contrast when Mugabe in Zimbabwe prints money, only the people using Zimbabwe currency are hurt. Which means the rest of the world is mostly unaffected.

[1] Or allegedly "lose track" of it :).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXlxBeAvsB8

http://www.graysonforcongress.com/newsitem.asp?NewsId=90

http://www.graysonforcongress.com/newsitem.asp?NewsId=91

Re:Hrmm

[BobisOnlyBob]

They're still surprisingly popular, although they're usually in tourist spots and require two coins to be placed in: the penny/nickel to squish, and a token fee for operation. Utter ripoff, but nice memorabilia.

Re:Why don't they hire men?

[MichaelSmith]

Robots are never affected by having a bad night with the baby and falling asleep at the wheel.

I'm not trying to be misogynist here, but should women with very small kids be working? Isn't this exactly the type of thing we should expect the government to try to protect through programs designed to give women time off that they need after having a baby?

Its not just women who look after the baby you know.

Re:Why don't they hire men?

[xquark]

Because some men tend to take "a lot" of coffee breaks in their cars, each time taking a shoe full of $1 and $2 coins with them....

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=107801

Re:Why don't they hire men?

[voss]

The quote is out of context, the article was referring to the safety of robots versus human driven forklifts,
  the gender of the forklift driver is not an issue.

MySQL password?

[commlinx]

I wonder if the Australian Federal Police (AFP) setup security for the mint?

Might try a blank root password and see about getting that robot to do a home delivery.

Re:Good morning

[pete-wilko]

So what's your point? The banner says 'news for nerds' - this is interesting stuff.

You know the modern web browser was invented 16 years ago - should we link to mosaic every time a story on FF/IE/Chrome/Safari/Opera comes up?