You may be aware of the current trend for automation to take shape of our daily lives. This comes in many forms from autonomous vehicles to our appliances and smart homes being turned on using IOT principles through gestures or sound and often remotely. To even robots being implemented in factories and the manufacturing process.
Automation comes in many forms and both hurdles and triumphs as it continues to be developed and utilized across industries. There are a lot of hurdles to automation and IOT principles being utilized in various industries -- such as manufacturing, warehousing, or freight – for many reasons. One, again is that supposedly robots and automated processing steal peoples' jobs and the need for human hands to do all the work. Secondly, the fear of humans have of robots and working alongside robots or robotic systems in place.
Sci-fi movies have been around for decades showing the pitfall of humanity working alongside robots or AI principles being trusted and later gone out of hand. You may recall movies such as Terminator, Matrix and many others showing this spiral of technology out of hand. Well, the movies are very entertaining and certainly worth checking out for any sci-fi fan, however, we need to ask ourselves: are robots really going to compete with us or spread out of control or are they more likely to aid us and help companies become more efficient? The idea of robots replacing all workers in a plant is not the right way of going about efficiency. Humans are needed in many tasks within manufacturing companies: such as human resources, management, administration, among many others within just manufacturing such as management and providing the fuel or electricity to the machines. Human hands are needed just as the human brain is needed because it is so complex and the human insight so profound that robots cannot replace this and will not for quite some time away, if not indefinitely.
People also understand other people way better than any automated system or robot can. Sure, we can put cameras everywhere and various self-check systems that will do a good job of monitoring employees or the overall efficiency within a plant, but the human factor should also be there in the administrative sense. However, if we use the robots for the hard labor of manufacturing and utilize humans for the administration or oversight, then we have efficiency because both groups are working in tandem doing their strengths for productivity.
The Daily Beast recentky had a story published about the concept of killer robots called Robots Are Killing People How Worried Should We Be. The article actually brought up some good points because today in its present shape, there are many hurdles to overcome in the manufacturing process of humans and robots working side-by-side. This is again why the ideal solution is to use both not in that capacity but on the strengths of robotics and human labor. Some aspects of labor robots cannot do and vice versa (we cannot lift a lot of weight without a pully of some sort or lever system in place).
The article actually lists an interesting example of someone in Germany dying due to being hit by a robot inside an auto plant. It also references a new documentary about the subject called The Truth About killer Robots by Maxim Pozdorovkin. It will certainly raise questions that is for sure.
This is again why combining human and machine systems in a dangerous capacity where it is a very close area of operation and a lot of movement involved is not a good idea. It is less of a warning of humans and machines not being able to coexist in a factory and more so of a point for companies to have an efficient workflow in place.
The article does point out an interesting scenario though and makes you think about the future of actual robots in the workforce (not just machine systems but humanoid types of robots). For instance, the idea of strikes being made ineffective due to managers being able to deploy robots in place of workers inside the factories.
However, the workers were there in place originally before going on strike and there is a reason they were hired and why they are needed in addition to the robots. So by taking themselves out of the work environment, and thus organizing a strike, can still be effective. However, one must admit that it is an interesting point and the ramifications can be pretty profound if robots truly take over manufacturing in even just the labor process as a whole.
Manufacturing has always advanced with technology and evolved over time, so this is another evolution that will find a way to make companies more efficient and industries to grow. Workers will also be needed and should not look at robots as their competitors but as systems that can help them by alleviating some of the heavy lifting or mundane tasks involved in a plant (they do not have to worry about a low attention span for instance).
Yes there will be hurdles to overcome and no robots may not be as smart at least not yet, but they can be more efficient in ways and more objective when you take emotion out of the being and leave it with an algorithm and machine learning then you have something a company can find useful in deploying for many tasks.