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New T-Shirt Sewing Robot Can Make As Many Shirts Per Hour As 17 Factory Workers (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: In 2015, after years of research, SoftWear Automation introduced LOWRY, a sewing robot, or sewbot, that uses machine vision to spot and adjust to distortions in the fabric. Though initially only able to make simple products, such as bath mats, the technology is now advanced enough to make whole t-shirts and much of a pair of jeans. According to the company, it also does it far faster than a human sewing line. SoftWear Automation's big selling point is that one of its robotic sewing lines can replace a conventional line of 10 workers and produce about 1,142 t-shirts in an eight-hour period, compared to just 669 for the human sewing line. Another way to look at it is that the robot, working under the guidance of a single human handler, can make as many shirts per hour as about 17 humans. The company has emerged as a leader among those trying to automate sewing, drawing the interest of businesses that make home goods and of course clothing manufacturers, including Tianyuan Garments Company, a Chinese firm that produces for brands such as Adidas and Armani. Tianyuan Garments has invested $20 million in a 100,000-square foot factory in Little Rock, Arkansas, planned to open in 2018. The factory will be staffed with 21 robotic production lines supplied by SoftWear Automation, and will be capable of making 1.2 million t-shirts a year.
I guess all that Bangladeshi child labor was still too expensive huh? Had to cheapen it even more?
And is this supposed to be great news for Little Rock, Arkansas, which will see a huge growth in the 27 jobs needed to operate this new automated factory?
US production per worker is currently about $58,000, and seems to be going up by $10,000 per decade.
That's per capita, meaning "per person". If the per-capita output were distributed equally to every man, woman, and child everyone would have about $58.000 to spend. Each year. Including kids and babies. And they could do it again next year.
This will only go up as AI and automation take over. A huge number of driving jobs will be taken over by self-driving vehicles in the next decade (already happening with long-haul trucks), and AI and robotics will take over ever more of the production, working 24/7 and making more goods, more cheaply, and faster than humans.
We need to transition away from the current economic system real soon, or suffer massive riots and the downfall of our culture as unemployed people riot and take it down for us.
We need a way to spread the wealth out a little more evenly. UBI is one way, and we're getting really close to the point where UBI will be cheaper than the cost of government assistance plus the lost cost of higher crime and prison for the poor.
Perhaps taxing the robots and using the money to fund the rest of UBI would work.
We could also lower the SS retirement age, or go to a 4-day work week. Lots of options, many would work or could be made to work.
But we have to start transitioning just about now, or risk the downfall of our culture.
The real value of this tech is that it will allow for bespoke clothing to become a lot more accessible. Whether or not this iteration is capable of it, that future is inevitable.
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I would rather actually fund education so more people would be qualified for work beyond being a meat-part in a machine, doing the same thing over and over again for days, months, years.
That was a good idea in previous decades.
Currently the number of jobs is shrinking, while the workforce is not(*). it's already causing a lot of stress in our society, and probably one reason for the recent election results.
The system was able to soak up some of the excess - the meme of children living with their parents until well into adulthood is one result - but it's starting to show signs of saturation. The burgeoning debt of education versus finding a job, currently being a topic of concern, is one bit of evidence.
Training and education are certainly important, but it doesn't address the problem. It'll only result in educated unemployed.
We need a way to support non-workers in our society, and pretty quick.
(*) Roughly speaking, population is remaining steady. Meanwhile, productivity keeps rising.
I wonder how big the step would be to get that robot to make a suture, sewing skin instead of a t-shirt.
Two years ago, I had a bite at a restaurant but the meal didn't sit so well. I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and for some reason lost consciousness. I got to my senses and discovered I was bleeding profusely from an actually very small cut in my forehead. I went to the doc next morning and he stitched the cut.
Two weeks later, he removed the stitches and told me he was quite happy with the result. He mentioned that the cut was actually not a straight cut, but a "hook" which apparently is difficult to cleanly close without later showing an obvious scar.
From the summary: "uses machine vision to spot and adjust to distortions in the fabric". It would be very interesting to know whether it could lay a stitch to prevent scar tissue.
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