A Humanoid Robot Named "Baxter" Could Revive US Manufacturing

fangmcgee writes "Rethink Robotics invented a $22,000 humanoid robot named "Baxter" that could give cheap offshore labor a run for its money and return manufacturing jobs to U.S. soil. Artificial intelligence expert Rodney Brooks is the brain behind Baxter. From the article: 'Brooks’s company, Rethink Robotics, says the robot will spark a “renaissance” in American manufacturing by helping small companies compete against low-wage offshore labor. Baxter will do that by accelerating a trend of factory efficiency that’s eliminated more jobs in the U.S. than overseas competition has. Of the approximately 5.8 million manufacturing jobs the U.S. lost between 2000 and 2010, according to McKinsey Global Institute, two-thirds were lost because of higher productivity and only 20 percent moved to places like China, Mexico, or Thailand.'"

Comments

Unclear on the Concept.

[rueger]

" a $22,000 humanoid robot named "Baxter" that could give cheap offshore labor a run for its money and return manufacturing jobs to U.S. soil.

Uh... seems like someone is unclear on the definition of "job."

Re:Unclear on the Concept.

[Anonymous Coward]

This should be modded up! I work for an embedded electronics manufacturer, although not in the USA or China. Things like pick and place machines and automated testing has enabled us to produce a much higher volume with less employees.

The choice is either not to do it, then become overpriced, lose contracts and then everybody loses their jobs, or automate, then the shittier jobs disappear (repetitive manual labor) but *loads* of more qualified jobs are created!

Sure, we have less people soldering and manually testing stuff. But with the higher volume of sales we now have lots more technicians to do debugging and service, way more programmers, people designing, maintaining and programming test equipment, more sales folks, a bigger IT staff, more managers and various other "desk jobs", etc. We also buy lots of stuff from local suppliers (including many custom made parts) which create a whole lot of jobs locally, we keep the local delivery drivers busy, etc. And we train a lot of people. They get a lot of very meaningful design and manufacturing experience.

There's a whole lot of good that comes from keeping *some* jobs locally vs outsourcing everything to a country with sweatshop like conditions.

Re:Guess where will it be cheapest to operate Baxt

[NJRoadfan]

Electrical service is much more reliable in the US compared to China/India. There is also an advantage of having your product manufacturing close to your marketplace... namely lower shipping costs.

This is the long term future

[rabtech]

This is the long term future for a lot of manual labor across the board. What that will mean for the future of human society is anyone's guess. Perhaps we'll all work 10 hour weeks. Or maybe most will be surfs, crushed under the boots of the aristocracy (robot owners).

How a consumer-driven economy can survive these changes is another huge question mark.

Re:Guess where will it be cheapest to operate Baxt

[LordLimecat]

And yet everyone (i hope?) agrees that it would be ridiculous to complain that automation kills jobs or that we should eliminate automation....
(for those who dont, perhaps we should use spoons instead of shovels for ditch digging)

I have to ask how much sense it makes to complain about where the job gets done, unless the angle is "are the conditions humane". Spending more money to do the same job seems to make more sense, and honestly the guy in China hoping for $100 a month seems to deserve the labor more than the guy in the US coasting off of his (relatively) large unemployment check.

Not trolling, would be interested if someone could make a case for where Im going wrong here.

Re:Guess where will it be cheapest to operate Baxt

[Anonymous Coward]

They used to predict in the 50s that in the future a man would be able to easily support himself while only working two days a week.

Funny thing is, they were actually correct. It's easy to live on two days of work a week... if you restrict yourself to living at a medium level of prosperity by 1950s standards.

Still, someone has to sell them ...

[DavidClarkeHR]

Well, not really. It would shift production back to north america, and that would require technicians to install and maintain the robots.

Installation can be done by a consultant, and is a one-time cost. For maintenance, at $22,000, it would be cheaper to replace three of them per year than keeping a technician employed. All you need is someone who after his other tasks can spend ten minutes on loading in the program as per the instructions left by the consultant.

Until the robots are self-servicing, self-selling and self-assembling, there will be work. Once they've mastered two of those three, I think we will have larger issues.

In anticipation of that time, it should clearly be stated that I, for one, will welcome our cold, unfeeling, american-made robot masters. Unless these get copied by the chinese as well, and then? ... well, I don't speak binary or mandarin.