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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.
The robots wanted better working conditions and got replaced by humans. Damn corporations!
People are flawed creatures capable of manufacturing more profitable iterations of themselves for the workplace.
What jobs are safest?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Maybe the robots can ask for unemployment.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Mercedes is shifting to what it calls “robot farming” - equipping workers with an array of smaller, lighter machines. ...
The change will mean smaller, more flexible systems that work side-by-side with humans will replace some of the large traditional robotic machines, including in the production of the new Mercedes E-Class. A human or a lightweight machine will replace two fixed robots for the alignment of the car’s new heads-up display, which projects speed and directions on to the windshield.
the basic problem is that Mercedes invested in large fixed machines that are limited in their abilities. they are temporarily relieving some of the large robots of certain duties to let more agile robots do the job. until the more agile robots are 100% ready, human will be assisting the robots.
it's 2016 and it's about time companies start investing in manufacturing machines that have hands with dexterity equal to humans. also, robotics companies need to develop better programming interfaces so that the robots can be taught what to do rather than directly programmed.
robots are still center stage here and humans are going to be on the sidelines again shortly.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
It's almost as if the Germans have just found a source of cheap human labour.
... the cost of reprogramming.
If we can have Robots that make everything for nothing, including themselves, then we will be in a Utopia as no one will have want for anything.
You haven't thought it through my friend. First off, human want is basically infinite, so there is that. Second, we have limits to the amount of energy practically available to us. Energy is the ultimate constraint on production of anything. Third, there are plenty of resources beyond labor that are scarce and provide practical constraints on production of tangible goods. Unless you are going to invoke some Star Trek replicator level of science fiction, even a self replicating hugely flexible robot will not mean the end of scarcity.
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.
Automation is already starting to replace engineers and soldiers. Expert systems are making inroads in medicine and law. There is already a glut of lawyers. Although the impact should be, for now, on the lower levels jobs of those fields, they could all be subject to great reductions in numbers of workers needed, except, due to obvious self-serving reasons, politicians.
The janitors generally work harder and longer hours than CEOs.
No as a matter of fact janitors do NOT work harder and longer than the CEOs. The fact that you say that shows that you have no idea what a CEO of a large company actually does or the sort of hours they put in. I'll presume you know what a janitor does but I've yet to meet one who works harder than a CEO. They also provide quite a lot less value to a company and are far more easily replaced.
Are a lot of CEOs overpaid? Certainly. Are a lot of rank and file workers underpaid? Of course. But let's not get absurd about the relative value or typical work ethic of janitors.
As the janitors don't get 6-12 weeks of paid vacation a year.
Neither do most CEOs and even if they did, most couldn't really take it. Being CEO of a large corporation is a pretty all consuming job. You don't get to that job by taking a lot of time off and you certainly don't stay there by taking time off.
In a world without labor cost, where robots can produce windmills, solar panels, and geothermal plants, even energy will have near zero cost.
Not according to anyone who has even a basic understanding of accounting. Even if the production of those things could be completely automated (it cannot without invoking science fiction) there still are costs of materials, cost of financing, limited amounts of land, environmental costs, cost of tooling, cost of design, and plenty of other non-trivial costs that you aren't considering. The fact that you take direct labor to approximately zero doesn't make it free. Not even close.
By the way we've heard the "energy too cheap to meter" argument before. It was bogus then and it is bogus now.
Yeah. How many humans can the world accommodate? In a world without "artificial scarcity" they'll breed like rabbits on viagra and fertility pills (producing real scarcity), and already there is arguably far too many of them.
There is plenty of evidence that isn't necessarily true. Birth rates in many countries have fallen below replacement as they have improved their economic well being. The best birth control appears to be economic opportunity. A Malthusian catastrophe is not a particularly likely scenario. It's just a perfect example of noticing a trend and extrapolating naively.