Video: Meet FRIDA, the Dainty Factory Robot That Wants Your Job

The guy in the picture really looks german:
Ya Ya. Alles Gute!

...and that's why I'm studying electrical engineering.

Good Bye Unions, Illegal Immigrants, Sweat Shops, and any other type of low level jobs..

Next itteration will make burgers and shakes only able to say... "would you like fries with that".

Plus they can't spit in you food and wont ever show up late for work.

@ Swashy

It could just be that the acronym they came up with spelled out FRIDA, which is a feminine name. Unless you know a guy named Frida. Or the other possiblity is that since it's a habit of guys to refer to things as "she" Cars, boats, robots, most anything. Beside the point that this is another pretty cool robot to come along, it's kinda sexist you'd automatically draw that conclusion, just sayin....

This would have to be very cheap to bottom out below labor cost in 3rd world and developing countries. There may be some stateside assembly jobs, however, where replacing a third or half a production line could turn profitable - particularly with rising employer-based costs to employment (healthcare, etc).

Perfect, big oil smashes prior hopes of an electric car, corporate america sends labor overseas, and now robots come along to take away as many remaining hands on labor jobs as possible. Thank God I went to college.

@ Oakspar

Don't forget that it can work 24/7, with the only ongoing costs being electricity, maintenance, etc. Even if it cost 50K up front, after five years of 24 hour operation that will have been the equivalent of having paid around $1.14/hour (and saved him the cost of training, retraining, overtime pay, downtime, and so on).

Swashy... I didn't realise that an ACRONYM had a gender, and infact NOWHERE did anyone claim it was female or give it robo tits or vagina.

.. i like this robot,bound to only improve the standard of life in 1st world countries.

Cheers, eh

It appears the video is no longer available on YouTube, but you can still find it here:

http://www.abb.com/cawp/abbzh254/fcfbdad9a72cfe08c1257862006bcfbf.aspx

At the begining of the 19th century 80% of jobs were in agriculture. But automation and super farms has changed that. By the mid 20th century 80% of jobs were in manufactruring (america's greateset era..building the world's largest middle class population)....thanks to out sourcing and automation that has changed. At the begining of the 21st century 80% of jobs are in the service sector (bank tellers, cashiers, food industry, mall employees)...now thanks to these robots they will be out of a job soon. And guess what, there is nowhere else to go except the military....is it coming toether for you yet? Progress is good...but we live in a free market economy. These advances will turn most of the population into "useless eaters" as David Rockafellar calls them. Bye Bye american dominance, bye bye middle class...hello welfare state.

@aldrons

Do you honestly ever not bash the United States. This will make third world countries worse off than developed nations. Because corporations will no longer need to put the West's factories in third world countries. While the amount of people in the developed world getting a college degree goes up every year meaning not doing menial factory work.

@kaizen, statistically 80% of the U.s job market is service oriented. So think what automation will do to that. From ATM's to robotic car plants..corporations are pushing the average family guy type out of work. This technology is for 1st world middle class killers. A 1st world employee costs about 40 grand a year (for a menial job). A 3rd world employee costs $2500 a year. Who do you think they will replace first? "But Aldron, the corporations, respect and need us." *cough, wal-mart, cough*.
I think in my lifetime machines will be the cashiers in restaurants, and the sales "people" in malls will be artificial, the manufacturing industry (the u.s backbone for 200 years)will be robotic, dancing with the stars will feature Frida's progeny...i mean she has cool moves. Sadly Watson's progeny will eat up your prized white collar jobs, economists,engineers, accountants, analysts. Unemployment right now is at 10% the highest in u.s history...welcome to the welfare state.
To finally answer your question, i'm not bashing, i'm being critical.

Interesting point of view I understand how you can come to those conclusions but watson replacing engineers ehh maybe in 50 years its not quite A.I yet. Also I don't see service jobs being replaced until a real A.I is created either. These companies are mostly run by people from developed nations which countries do you think they care about the most, their own. If machines replace us that much in the end they don't need us and we would be a welfare state. 10% still isn't bad compared to a lot of European countries and developing nations. At that point of robotic take over no other countries would be able to compete economically. No matter how many humans you have they are not as efficient as robots and you have to pay them. So these "welfare states" would still be better off.

Your fired.

Don't think robotics and the new software are only going to replace factory workers. A robot, or software, will eventually outperform every human, in every human-based job.

The real problem: If the humans aren't being paid - who will be buying the products the robots are making?

Robots
- don't go on vacation.
- don't stay in hotels.
- don't eat at McDonald's.
- don't travel much for business.
- don't buy clothing at Walmart.
- don't buy pharmaceticals.
- don't need medical care, hospital beds, band-aids . . . .

So aren't we all just running toward the edge of a cliff - all in the name of increasing productivity?

Are we doomed by the rules of economics?

I don't yet know the answer - but I think we need to figure this out pretty soon.

The partial answer is that in the near future "money" will become information. Once you own one good robot, or one of your good friends or a family member has one, it will be able, with a good 3d printer, to build another one for you, and so on. Then, with some readily available raw materials (scrap wood, old tires, wire, sand, rocks, soil, grass, human or animal waste, water, some seeds, etc.)it will grow or construct anything you could ever want or need, working 24hours a day, endlessly, on whatever project you assign. My guess is everybody will need at least two of these humanoid robots because the interaction between the two would multiply their creativeness and productive capibilities, plus one could repair the other should something happen that the one couldn't fix alone. We'll be allowed at some point to turn them loose on old landfils to reclaim all that "waste" that's been accumulating over the past 60 years or so. What is now considered waste at the landfil will be raw materials, fuel, compost, in short, treasure once we have limitless cheap labor. The same will go for food production. Eventually everything but information will be virtually free, and that will be very cheap as well.