General Motors reprograms robots to put a toy car in a wrapped box. Unionize, elves, before it's too late!
Posted 12.19.2012 at 6:00 pm
7 Comments
Sure, the elves in this video look happy, but are they secretly worried about job security? They should be. GM reprogrammed a few robots in its line to wrap gifts, and this will likely not bode well for some of the little guys.
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Guess what Uncle Sam, with the joys of automation and robotics, which makes cheap products with less labor as the article says.
It also brings "less labor to tax for Uncle Sam, too."
D'oH!
Cheap promo video. The robots are not really wrapping gifts start to finish.
What a dumb article jeeze. PS will do anything to post an article these days sigh--and many have nothing to do with science.
^
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"Popular Science has been a leading source of science and technology news since its inception way back in 1872..."
Science and Technology. This article has to do with robots. A robot is a form of technology.
Thank You.
Sorry Cookiees453, I have to agree with gizmowiz. This is a shameless plug for General Motors. Just because Britney Spears is standing next to Bugatti Veyron in one of her music videos does not mean her work is relevant to a technology magazine.
All magazines do this. They all have advertisements, promotions, and at times political agendas. You're basically complaining about a television commercial. Speaking of which, I just love those advertisements at the bottom of the screen that play while I'm watching my favorite show. (sarcasm)
This was a cool video about robots and the holidays, and I enjoyed it.
This is significant from the perspective that all over this nation, there are multiaxis robots sitting idle. Many companies don't want to get away from the tasks the machines were actually purchased for, but don't have contracts to fill. They don't want to have to set up on a whole new type of production line because their costs for sitting idle so long are already getting real heavy. Many are forced to take two steps back for not taking one forward fast enough. They often end up selling their robots.
It's now very common to be able to buy used robots that have been sold multiple times, but have never actually done any work.
So it follows that one of the hottest things going in robotics right now is unconventional tasking, where a robot at a shop does work not normally associated with that shop, but that has a similar production configuration. Process integration is diversity, and that can keep some shops working that normally couldn't.
I don't care what PopSci or GM had for an intent with this piece, and I don't care. This article is significant regardless.