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Mercedes-Benz Swaps Robots For People On Assembly Lines (theguardian.com)
The usual narrative in the last few years is that robots relentlessly displace humans in today's highly mechanized workplaces (like factories and mines), but sometimes robots' speed and dexterity can't overcome their basic problem -- namely, they're robots. Reader jones_supa writes with this story from The Guardian about why robots aren't always the right tool, excerpting: Bucking modern manufacturing trends, carmaker Mercedes-Benz has been forced to trade in some of its assembly line robots for more flexible humans. The robots cannot handle the pace of change and the complexity of the key customization options available for the company's S-Class saloon at the 101-year-old Sindelfingen plant, which produces 400,000 vehicles a year from 1,500 tons of steel a day. The dizzying number of options for the cars – from heated or cooled cup holders, various wheels, carbon-fibre trims and decals, and even four types of caps for tire valves – demand adaptability, a quality that is still more easily fulfilled by humans than robots.
it's 2016 and it's about time companies start investing in manufacturing machines that have hands with dexterity equal to humans.
For specific tasks we have devices that already exceed human dexterity. Sometimes by a lot. The challenge isn't really dexterity as much as programability. We can make devices that hugely exceed human precision for many tasks. Replicating a human hand as an end effector is kind of a pointless and expensive exercise for most tasks. There are much more optimal designs depending on what you are doing. For example having a robotic copy of a human hand holding a welding torch is pointless complication and adds a lot of cost. There are people working on anthro designs but mostly for academic rather than practical purposes. I suspect you'll see it in places but as a general proposition replicating the human body isn't often the best approach to problem solving.
also, robotics companies need to develop better programming interfaces so that the robots can be taught what to do rather than directly programmed.
Already done. I was working with VR programming of robots for assembly line work 15 years ago in my day job and there has been progress since then.
Well that sounds like the top 5% aren't giving the bottom 40% enough money to begin with. If the bottom 40% were paid more then they wouldn't need government redistribution.
Seriously what makes a better company. Paying the employees who work for a living more or paying the cep another 2 million in compensation on top of his 10 million a year?
The janitors generally work harder and longer hours than CEOs. As the janitors don't get 6-12 weeks of paid vacation a year.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
For some start-up, sure, being the CEO does require a lot of drive and intelligence. You don't put together a company from scratch without a lot of talent and smarts.
For some well-established company, no. A lot of those CEOs aren't all that intelligent. They got those jobs because of their networking skills; they went to the right colleges, joined the right fraternities, went to the right country clubs, developed the right contacts, etc. That's how they got those jobs. They don't have to be all that smart, they just have to be reasonably decent at picking VPs to do the hard work for them, and then just show up for all the functions they're supposed to show up for. Basically, a CEO at companies like that is little more than the public face of the company, a figurehead. A reasonably-intelligent and socially-skilled janitor could do it just as well.