ABB Robots Steal My Job
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Thursday, 4 of December , 2008 at 12:15 am
Back when I was a starving young undergrad, I took the only summer job I could find… At M & N Plastics in Portland, Oregon. We made roof vents. My job was to pull plastic pieces out of a molding machine, trim off excess, and put the parts on a conveyor belt, over and over again, forever. While poking around YouTube today, I found this pair of robots from ABB that have rendered me useless at my old job:
See? That is EXACTLY what my job was. They do everything I can do, only better and (in the long run) cheaper. I’m not sure how serious of an issue this actually is, but if robots become cheap and ubiquitous enough, entry level labor positions may become harder and harder for starving undergrads to find.
[ ABB Robotics ]
Comments (4)
Category: Industrial
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Comment by Ironman
Made Thursday, 4 of December , 2008 at 12:17 pm
impressive, but yet too slow, and it drops some clippings… tsk tsk tsk that’ll come out of your pay check mr. robot.
Comment by xamox
Made Thursday, 4 of December , 2008 at 4:38 pm
You could always program them (ohh wait I tried that and got laid off). Actually I used to work for a 3-d vision guidance company which was bought out by braintech in August. Braintech is an exclusive partner for ABB so don’t be surprised if you see something like this incorporated as well. I think we’ll see way more of this stuff at the auto companies collapse and the union dissipates. What surprises me is that robot doesn’t appear to be in a cell.
Comment by Saul Wall (The Snake Oil Baron)
Made Friday, 5 of December , 2008 at 6:00 pm
There are lots of jobs I have had that could have been partly or completely automated and it would have given me a lot more time to do far more useful and rewarding work that just never got done. I have spent so much time in my life acting as a router for simple information or a translator between paper and computerized information or doing repetitive or pointless tasks while cursing the fact that these were the sort of tasks that employers could hire people to do if time, funding, and government regulation didn’t prevent them from being done.
The number of people who could use a low paid intro level assistant is vast. So is the number of summer job seeking students and young people entering the workforce who would love to have these jobs. These assistants would gain valuable job experience but can’t because governments and human rights labour schmucks have decided that low wage jobs are exploitative and must be banned. I have been unemployed many times when I would have been very willing to work for less than minimal politically correct wage to get some income, some experience and a chance to impress an employer. But having been prevented by our noble overlords I can not understand how anyone can possible see minimum wage laws as “compassionate”.
Bring on the robots but stop banning humans from being employed.
Comment by Alan
Made Monday, 8 of December , 2008 at 2:26 am
Looks very impressive although as mentioned it is a bit slow. I wonder if the speed was done to film the sequence in detail?
Comment by Joey1058
Made Sunday, 27 of September , 2009 at 3:44 am
“Yogi” and “BooBoo”. I’m guessing the speed of the bot’s movements is based on how warm and soft the bumpers still are. Faster movement from Yogi will flex the bumper into the path of BooBoo’s scissors.