Where are all our cool robots?

We’re supposed to reach Mars first.

Robots are used a lot in manufacturing, which is part of the reason there are fewer manufacturing jobs than there used to be.

Alexa and the like with smart houses are pretty much robots.

A friend of mine is a Mashgiach for a large Kashrus organization, and was once sent to China. He has many fascinating stories to tell from just that one trip. One of them is very relevant as one possible answer to this question.

He visited a factory that uses cabbage to manufacture some food ingredient. Trucks come in the gate of the factory and stop near the building. A man then unloads the cabbage from the truck and carries it 20 feet to a hopper, where he dumps them in to begin the processing. He asked the boss why he doesn’t just install a conveyor belt that goes from the trucks to the hopper?

He answered that a conveyor belt would cost $12,000 and if it broke down, the entire production would be held up while waiting for repair or parts. The man OTOH gets paid $100 per month (!) and he can therefore feed a man and his family for ten years for the same cost as the conveyor belt. (No payroll tax or health benefits obviously.) And if the man should break his leg and be unable to work? The boss pointed to gate of the factory, where a few poor unemployed men hung around all day, just waiting for that to happen so that they could immediately replace him.

So ironically, in this model, people are cheaper than machines! And the factory owner is a hero for employing people instead of replacing them with machines.

Do you mean the ones who assemble automobiles (welding or painting), or help manufacture surgical appliances, the ones that move merchandise in warehouses, the ones who act as the eyes of a building or manufacturing facility or the ones that put together other robots?

The ones that assemble other robots are currently in short supply according to NYT article several weeks ago. The simple ones that do a single task on an assembly line (e..g. drill hole, tighten bolts, arc weld joints, etc) are readily available. Jury is still out on growth market for surgical robots. Lots of hospitals, out-patient centers etc. spent a gazillion dollars installing robotic operating rooms and tried to use that investment to push up pricing on surgical procedures. Insurance companies pushed back and refused to pay until there is sufficient evidence showing incremental cost is warranted in terms of greater success rates, fewer “accidents” during surgery, better long-term survival rates etc. Thus, today, there is considerable “over-capacity” in surgical robotic production capability as new orders have flattened .

Gadolh.. I live in a town where robots are big biz. We’ve got robots making other robots, making hip replacement parts, making the insides of some surgical implants. There is one place that makes them for military application, but they won’t say much else. Most of these places are open for tours.

Most of these places are open for tours.

Are the tours conducted by robots or by humans?