Robots That Walk and Talk Are Coming To Car Factories (nytimes.com) 32
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: At a BMW factory in South Carolina, a human-shaped robot with a screen for a face recently stepped from a charging station toward a stack of green plastic boxes. It grasped an auto part from one of the boxes, pivoted, placed the part in a trolley, then pulled the trolley across the floor. The robot's slow, stiff movements suggested a worker with a bad hangover rather than a technological revolution. "They're still slower than humans," Ulrich Wieland, a BMW vice president in charge of logistics at the factory, in Spartanburg, told reporters invited to see the robot in June. But, he added, "they're advancing fast."
Automakers have used robots for decades, but they are usually powerful, one-armed machines that are fixed in place and perform repetitive tasks like welding body frames or applying adhesives to door panels. Now, most major automakers are betting that robots designed to resemble human beings, known as humanoids, will usher in a new wave of automation and efficiency. Equipped with artificial intelligence, they are expected to move around and do tasks now done by humans without any modifications to factories or heavy equipment.
Unlike most of the robots now in use, humanoids would respond to voice commands and theoretically solve problems and react to unforeseen events. They would never take a lunch break, join a union or require health insurance. To optimists, robots could rescue U.S. manufacturing by increasing productivity, solving shortages of skilled workers and giving Western carmakers a fighting chance at competing with Chinese rivals that enjoy lower costs. Boring but important jobs like sorting parts would be done by robots, freeing humans for more interesting and specialized work.
Automakers have used robots for decades, but they are usually powerful, one-armed machines that are fixed in place and perform repetitive tasks like welding body frames or applying adhesives to door panels. Now, most major automakers are betting that robots designed to resemble human beings, known as humanoids, will usher in a new wave of automation and efficiency. Equipped with artificial intelligence, they are expected to move around and do tasks now done by humans without any modifications to factories or heavy equipment.
Unlike most of the robots now in use, humanoids would respond to voice commands and theoretically solve problems and react to unforeseen events. They would never take a lunch break, join a union or require health insurance. To optimists, robots could rescue U.S. manufacturing by increasing productivity, solving shortages of skilled workers and giving Western carmakers a fighting chance at competing with Chinese rivals that enjoy lower costs. Boring but important jobs like sorting parts would be done by robots, freeing humans for more interesting and specialized work.
No, the robots are coming for assembly too (Score:2)
A specious assumption, on the face of it (Score:3)
American auto manufacturers exclusively make cars which have very little marketability other than in the U.S. itself. "Increasing productivity" and "solving shortages of skilled workers" is not going to magically make the Chinese or Koreans want to buy lots of F-250s.
Re:A specious assumption, on the face of it (Score:4, Informative)
American auto manufacturers exclusively make cars which have very little marketability other than in the U.S. itself.
Last year, America's automobile exports were worth $54B.
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Re: A specious assumption, on the face of it (Score:2)
Re: A specious assumption, on the face of it (Score:2)
Don't worry, soon we won't be able to afford to buy cars
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It depends what you include into "American auto manufacturers". Two thirds of the exports are foreign designs that are manufacture in factories located in the USA: BMW, Stellantis, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Huyndai, Kia, Nissan. Exports by car designers headquartered in the USA include Ford (7 G$), GM (5.5 G$), Tesla (4 G$) https://www.usimportdata.com/b... [usimportdata.com]
If a person doesn't have a job... (Score:2)
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There will be even more market for obscene luxuries for the rich, that's their plan to keep the economy from imploding. Everyone else gets Universal (Very) Basic Income if they're lucky, or terrafoam or mass graves if they're not.
Re:If a person doesn't have a job... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Bingo, America's corporate culture is just pretty bad, particularly since the 80's when the mentality shifted from being responsible stewards to the glorified profit machine and corporate raider culture. A prime example is looking at the changes in GE once Jack Welch was put in charge and he was responsible for a lot of this cultural rot combined with the general de-regulation and cultural shift the Reagan era brought about from to the oil crisis 70's.
Didn't Tesla try bot-centric factories (Score:1)
...only to learn that bot maintenance was too expensive?
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...only to learn that bot maintenance was too expensive?
Robots do need healthcare, and for the foreseeable future it’s going to cost more than humans. At least with humans if they get a virus the entire workforce doesn’t go down at the same time and the plant can still function.
I wouldn't be so sure they go rogue (Score:2, Insightful)
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Lazy, ignoring explicit instructions and hiding it, possibly blackmailers and unionizers... sounds like they're already direct replacements for people.
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What people usually don't get is that LLMs don't reason, they follow scripts.
They have memorised most of the available human interactions available online, so they can behave convincingly in a wide range of situations mimicking proper human behaviour. They may even seem to reason if you put them in a loop and make them reflect on their own answers; this may result in them making proper logical inference, but you may also produce any number of illogical conclusions that happen to be the most likely next ste
Why an android form? (Score:2)
I just don’t get the value of using a humanoid figure. Are car assembly plants really so heavily optimised for the human body? Are human bodies so flexible in what they can manage? It all seems rather misconceived.
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Currwnt factory environments are optimized for human bodies. Future ones need not be. Though cars are also designed at least in part to be constructed and serviced by humans.
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Current
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Are car assembly plants really so heavily optimised for the human body?
Not really, but many of the machines in them are designed to be operated by humans.
Are human bodies so flexible in what they can manage?
Yes. Human bodies are incredibly versatile compared to any non-primate. Granted, there's things we can't do, but we've got a very good mix of abilities compared to other creatures. Our skin is a bit disappointingly fragile, but otherwise we're quite capable.
It all seems rather misconceived.
Agreed. It would make more sense to use robot arms with the tools redesigned to go on one instead of being operated by human hands. A lot of the tools are robotic already,
Corporate propaganda (Score:3)
Translation to normal speech: making humans unemployed, homeless, and hungry without health care or a social safety net in order to increase corporate wealth.
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Translation to normal speech: making humans unemployed, homeless, and hungry without health care or a social safety net in order to increase corporate wealth.
So, the first 2/3 of Elysium [wikipedia.org] ...
vote Democratic Socialist in the primaries (Score:2)
A lot of knob riding form NYT (Score:2)
Freeing humans from the tyranny of having jobs...
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We can hope, but probably not in the immediate future.
inefficient (Score:2)
It is horribly inefficient to do this, but it is a good experiment to learn from.
A conveyor belt would be far more efficient at this task. A sorting armature to pick the parts and place them on the belt. Another at the far end to place the part in position.
One interesting use for robots (Score:2)
Separate different types of plastic, sort things for recycling and reclaiming, and we can stop filling valleys with crap, packing that garbage down and building houses on top.