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Meet iRobot Founder Rodney Brooks's New Industrial Bot, Baxter
First time accepted submitter moon_unit2 writes "Technology Review has the scoop on a new industrial robot created by famed robotics researcher Rodney Brooks. The robot, Baxter, is completely safe, extremely adaptable, and ridiculously easy to program. By providing a way to automate simple manufacturing work, it could help make U.S. manufacturers compete with Chinese companies that rely on low-cost human labor. You can see the new robot in action in a related video of the robot in action and Brooks discussing its potential." $22 thousand and shipping next month, goes the story.
Options: a) raise the _minimum_ education and skill level
What? This is not the problem. The problem is in training for jobs where we need people. I know more that a few sales people at the mall with masters degrees... Yet it takes days to get a plumber or A/C repair man.
Remember in the Jetsons where George says "These 3 day workweeks are killing me!"
That is what the view of what this type of tech was supposed to get us... the same living standard with less work. Instead the idea was turned on its ear and a lot of the benefits were kept at the very top.
I'm all for this type of stuff, but I think society has to figure out ways for this to benefit everyone. In a capitalist society is okay for the people who own the capital to benefit the most, but I don't think that's an excuse to let the rest of the society head towards poverty. When we see that in other countries we tend to call that repression.
Yes, its slow (~4-6 pick & place operations per arm per minute), and not very strong (5 lbs max weight) in the current form. These restrictions are probably semi-arbitrary in the name of safety. But thats still enough to be an incredibly big deal in a large number of manufacturing tasks. Also important, its transportable (the base is on wheels), and flexible in learning new tasks, so it doesn't have to do just one thing but starts to approach the flexibility of a minimum wage worker. And for that role, it needs to be safe more than it needs to be quick.
Lets say it can perform task X at 1/4 the rate of a manufacturing worker. But at $8/hr minimum wage + 20% in additional costs/worker-hour, say $10/hr for a minimum wage worker. So that value is at least $2.50/hr.
So it pays for itself in 1100 worker-days, compared with a minimum wage worker and only 1 shift a day. At 3 shifts/day, payback is in 1 year!
Slow is NOT a problem when it is that cheap, that flexible and that safe.
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I work in a CNC Machine Shop. A robot like this would be great for unloading and reloading the Lathes for example.
I don't need it to be incredibly fast. It takes 2 or 3 minutes to run a part anyway. I just need it to be almost as fast as a person. If I can train it to pick up a blank, load it in the lathe, unload it when the cycle is complete, and stack the parts neatly in a tray, I free up a person to go complete a setup on another lathe, troubleshoot a process, complete an SPC chart, or go home and get a good nights rest while the robot runs parts for us.
It doesn't have to be fast, just fast enough.