Check out this video:
The robot being demoed is Baxter, which is a new industrial robot and the brainchild of Rodney Brooks, the guy who brought you the Roomba. Here is how NPR describes the technology (Could This Robot Save Your Job?, Mar 9).
Rethink Robotics, describes Baxter as a collaborative manufacturing robot. Brooks showed how Baxter, which costs $22,000 per model, can work alongside humans — not replace them — to do simple, repetitive tasks. …
Baxter has eyes for feedback. Though its eyes don’t see you as a person, they serve as a signal as to what it’ll do next.
Normally robots need to be programmed, but this one learns by physical training. Move Baxter’s arm and it learns that’s how it should move its arm. In just a few minutes, the robot can be taught, for example, to take something out of a box and place it on a conveyor belt, then, after it’s assembled, put it back in a box.
So this is seriously a pretty gee whiz bit of technology but does it live up to the hype of working with humans and saving jobs?
Those claims strike me as a bit of hyperbole. Capital gets substituted for labor — that’s the way it works — so Baxter is going to cost someone a job. However, the workers that remain will be more productive and they and their employers should be more competitive in the market place even if they are located in high wage countries.
The real question is in what kind of setting will these machines be really useful. I suspect that the action is on lower volume work that otherwise wouldn’t be worth a special purpose robot or would be too cumbersome to program. I suspect for Baxter to really be worthwhile it has to be cheap to buy and easy to maintain. On top of that, it has to be easy to change over between jobs. If the stars align on that, it could be very appealing for smaller manufacturers whose plants frequently change over from one job to the next.
Marty,
I actually saw this recently at a trade show in Chicago. Along with other ‘micro’ robots of the highly programmed models. The low cost and relative ease of this particular one does offer some tremendous opportunity for companies that sell products into high wage countries. On-going operating costs must be reasonable.
You stated that capital is used to substitute labor. At such a low cost and with a discovered economic savings you shouldn’t need to tie up capital and instead use the operating budget. Operating budgets provide a current return. If you can increase that return and fund the gain with the operating budget then you’ve improved the yield and held steady the amount of assets required to earn it.
Since you are talking about a $22K tool that may be able to work the three shifts with multiple product change overs; I think you can certainly find opportunity there. One of the benefits it provides, particularly in high wage nations is the ability to either manufacture, value add or ‘allocate’ physically closer to your actual customer.
If anyone wants to know what that can be worth I’ve helped many clients discover 272% improvements in productivity, 6 Sigma Accuracy and cycle time improvements of over 2 weeks; reducing assets in the process. Send me an email and I’ll be glad to help you build an opportunity model. I don’t even work for Baxter.
Steve
There was an article recently in the Journal about K’Nex bringing their manufacturing back to the US because of some design changes and using Baxter. They are in a unique position compared to other firms since they can leverage their customers (children) as their labor force for assembling the product. =p
http://on.wsj.com/Zx6ned
P.S. Keep an eye out around April when IBM will release a study about the impact of new tech in robotics, 3D printing, and open source electronics on supply chains!
Dan,
I saw that article and hope to write something about it for Monday.
Also, will you send me the IBM report or do I actually have to look for it?
[...] Monday I posted about Rethink Robotics’ Baxter robot which can be easily programmed to perform a variety of [...]