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."

Comments

Coming Soon

[evil crash]

Next the robots will want to unionize.

Re:Coming Soon

[i kan reed]

Nope, we're approaching 3 classes, Robot Slaves(who don't mind), super wealthy robot owners, and people who are expected to work in a world where work is done by robots.

Re:Coming Soon

[MightyYar]

Robot designers? Robot systems integrators? Robot process engineers? Robot maintenance and field service engineers?

Increasing productivity has historically been good for us. Less human capital spent on turning bolts frees up more for doing cool stuff. I don't doubt that there will be short-term pain for people who used to perform unskilled repetitive labor - but honestly they were losing their jobs to East Asians anyway. Sadly, retraining programs don't appear to work very well, so we might very well be stuck with a huge population dependent on public assistance throughout the remainder of their lives. But that is the short term view - the long term view is probably just as bright as other massive changes in productivity have been.

Re:Coming Soon

[h4rr4r]

Eventually we will have to have a huge class of people either allowed to starve to death or cared for by the state. Some people are not ever going to be capable of more than manual repetitive labor.

I think many nations will move towards extremely limited work weeks and high levels of social welfare. I think the USA will more likely go with more salaried employees who work long hours and a huge class of folks barely surviving. The salaried workers will be told by the media that these folks unable to find jobs are why they must pay high taxes and work long hours. The owners will profit even more.

At some point every non-creative job can be done by a machine. Many folks will be employed making hand made items as those will be a novelty, or cooking amazing new foods and the like. Those will be the only workers left.

Re:Coming Soon

[mjr167]

Isn't that what they said about the industrialization of agriculture last century? Isn't it a good thing that we no longer need to perform manual labor? I hate picking up heavy things or performing mindless repetitive tasks. Hell, I have a robot to vacuum my floors...

The economy is changing. Some fields are rapidly expanding and others are rapidly shrinking. As a result the people who are willing to accept the changes and adapt and move into the new positions will be successful and those who sit around go "woe is me! A robot took my job and I can't find another job turning this wrench a half turn every minute!" will be SOL and there will be no place for them.

You can not stagnate the world just because you are comfortable in it. As an engineer it is my job to eliminate my job. I don't bitch about how if I automate this one step then I will have less to do. I automate it and say "thank god I don't have to do that anymore!" then move on to the next step. There are plenty of things that an industrious person can do to make a living. They simply involve stepping outside of the factory and doing something that actually requires thought and effort.

Re:Coming Soon

[PPH]

This, from 1955:

CIO President Walter Reuther was being shown through the Ford Motor plant in Cleveland recently.

A company official proudly pointed to some new automatically controlled machines and asked Reuther: "How are you going to collect union dues from these guys?"

Reuther replied: "How are you going to get them to buy Fords?"

Open the pod bay doors HAL

[tedgyz]

That was a good example of human-robot collaboration.