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Robots Join Final Assembly Line At US Auto Plant
moon_unit2 writes "MIT Technology Review has a story about BMW's new collaborative final-assembly-line robots. The move could be significant in the ongoing automation of work, as robots have previously been incapable of doing such jobs, and too dangerous to work in close proximity to humans. Robots like the ones at BMW's South Carolina plant will also cooperate with human workers, by handing them a wrench when they need it. Perhaps the next big shift in labor could be robot-human collaboration."
Next the robots will want to unionize.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."-THG
What is the plan for when no human need lift a finger? Are we just going to kill off all the unuseful population? Sterilize 'em, slap 'em on the ass, and send them off into the BLM land? Put them in uniforms and send them to war? Hook them up to the Matrix? Hmm, only one or two of these suggestions even sounds remotely plausible.
We're on the cusp of having robots that pick fruit, for pete's sake. Floor-cleaning robots are becoming ubiquitous. Pretty soon the only jobs left to someone without an advanced degree will be plumber, and grade 1 robot repairman.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That was a good example of human-robot collaboration.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
I can't wait to see them replace all of us.
Nobody benefits except the finance guys.
Again.
This is happening all the places. In office work, this is there for 5-10 years.
In old days processes were executed by humans, and some easy to automate repetitive tasks in the process were handled by machines.
The new hype is that processes are all automated, and some hard to automate repetitive tasks are handled by humans.
The resulting job for the human is devastating, removes the meaning to being human.
Take reading the postcode on letters. A machine vision system is capable of reading 9999 of 10000 envelopes. For the remaining 1, you need a human. What happens is, there is a lost soul who sits at a computer screen, a new scan of an envelope comes up every second, and he types in the code. Then the next one... I would hang myself rather than do this job 8 hours a day.
Vajk
Robot human collaboration? I think you meant human cyborg relations.
sig?
This ain't right. "as robots have previously been incapable of doing such jobs" is simply not true. Cars have been rolling off Fiat assembly lines in Italy for the better part of 20 years untouched by human hands.
How's anyone going to learn skilled labor like this in the future if they can't even apprenticeship?
robot-human collaboration
Stepping stones. Tomorrow comes today, one moment closer at a time.
Is that closer than close or just close to close?
The move could prove a significant in the ongoing automation of work, as robots have previously been incapable of doing such jobs, and too dangerous to work in close proximity to humans.
The "ongoing automation of work" has been going on for centuries, and will continue thank goodness. Yes, that means rooms of human calculators were displaced by the device you are looking at right now, laundresses were displaced by automatic clothes washers, human dishwashers displaced by their automatic equivalents ... (and the last two helped half of humanity get out of the house and into far more rewarding, productive things).
There is always more work to do. If you look at the jobs of 50 years ago, I expect a large portion are gone now, yet people have found new, more productive work. Where would the software developers come from if they were still sewing shirts and digging coal?
The drawback isn't for society, but for individual workers. The economy as a whole becomes more productive, but the individual whose life-long skills become obsolete may be out of luck. We need to find a way to help and take care of those people; all of society benefits, while the entire cost is born by a very few.
Pretty soon the only jobs left to someone without an advanced degree will be plumber, and grade 1 robot repairman.
And everyone who is capable of getting an advanced degree will do so and we'll have a glut and subsequent huge amount of unemployed people with said degrees.
What needs to change is NOT automation but our economic system - and it's too late anyway to stop it. And the industrialists won't let it happen, either.
Capitalism cannot make the transition because it is dependent on consumption and you can't have consumption when no one can afford to buy things because of being unemployed.
We ain't seen nothing yet when comes to economic meltdowns.
Both GM and Toyota have spent lots of money on heavily automated plants with mixed success. On one hand, robots can be productive money-savers, depending on the task. On the other hand, they cost a lot of money and don't have the kind of flexibility a human with two hands a brain has. The reality is, labor is only a small part of the cost of auto manufacturing. Even in the most expensive jurisdictions, 10-15% is pretty much tops.
Their apartment complex mechanic had a robot whose body looked like a toolbox. He later became infatuated with Rosie, the robot maid.
also taking the lower level stepping stones is bad for people who used to move up to the sophisticated tasks. College does not tech the missing skills. We also need more trades / apprenticeship like learning for some of the more sophisticated tasks.
just don't take a red shirt job then
I believe there's a Kia plant in Kentucky where the vast majority of the car is assembled by robots. I couldn't find it but I once watched a video of it and it's fascinating.
It essentially starts with roll steel, then stamping, welding, painting, final assembly and so on. It's completely removed the human labor component from automobile manufacturing. And one thing that amuses me - labor used to be the biggest expense of a car. Now it's electricity at a fraction the rate. So why do cars still cost so much?
b/c the day a genocidal android/cylon/whatever that looks like her offers me favors in return for help wiping out humanity will be a very bad day to be the rest of you...
just keepin' it real...
I think you nailed it. The 8 hour workday needs to be shortened.
This might be workable... ...if you were able to make it so that it cost a company exactly the same to hire 2 workers @ 20 hours/week as it costs them to hire 1 worker @ 40 hours/week. Which means the government eats the individual per employee costs for the extra employees, as taxes which they do not collect.
First they came for the weavers, but I was not a weaver, and so I said nothing.
Then they came for the factory line workers, but I was in charge of programming the robots that took over that job so I said a whole lot of things about how to do it better. As I was paid a middle-class rate to automate a mind-numbingly boring job and remove the rote monotony of life freeing up a human soul to go do important things, I didn't feel particularly bad about doing it either. We're making the world a better place.
And then they came for the programmers, and I laughed in their face as they tried to make yet another super-high level languages that didn't suck or need dedicated programmers. And I laughed at their graphical programming interfaces made for the unskilled masses. And I laughed at all those companies that offshored development to poorly trained foreigners. And I laughed as they came back complaining that the highly skilled foreigners were demanding to be paid.
And then there was no one to speak out for me except the scientists, technophiles, engineers, and mathematicians who had decent jobs. Plus the artists, politicians, and managers that we apparently can have an unlimited number of without perfecting the industry. It's as if people found new things to do after farming was industrialized.
So for all you neo-Luddites out there, piss off and go find a loom to smash.
They better be undocumented Mexican robots, who'll do the work American robots refuse to do.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Robot-human collaboration? At some point it will be the robot telling the human what to do, and the human handing the wrench to the robot. I highly recommend that you agree upon a safe word with your robot overlord, just in case things get out of hand.
Assuming that the jobs lost will not be replaced by other jobs (hard to tell at this point), we do need a solution to unemployment.
Solution: tax the rich and give it away as a basic income.
Problem: inflation, resentment by the employed
Solution: total revolution (RBE, others).
Problem: not fully developed (might not even work)
What if people own and operate their own versatile manufacturing equipment (robots) so that they can produce and trade locally? It only makes sense then to subsidize the purchase of these robots. Eventually the production cost of making robots themselves will fall as well and people will be able to buy them on their own (some people are already).
What do you guys think?
Robots are tools used by humans. Calling this "robot-human collaboration" is like hammering in a nail and calling it "hammer-human collaboration".