Robots Make the Coins Go 'Round, Down Under 126
inkslinger77 writes "Computerworld has a cool slideshow of a Kuka Titan robot and a bunch of AGVs managing the circulation of coins at the Australian Mint. There's also a lengthier article where the head of the project talks about the main reason robots were employed. One of the reasons being that they radically reduce OH&S risk: 'We are finding that the AGVs are much safer and more reliable. Robots are never affected by having a bad night with the baby and falling asleep at the wheel. They are extremely accurate and they always do the same task in the same way.'"
Re:Why don't they hire men? (Score:5, Insightful)
Robots are never affected by having a bad night with the baby and falling asleep at the wheel.
I'm not trying to be misogynist here, but should women with very small kids be working? Isn't this exactly the type of thing we should expect the government to try to protect through programs designed to give women time off that they need after having a baby?
Its not just women who look after the baby you know.
Re:Why don't they hire men? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, you failed, but not because of your comments about work. You seem to be suggesting that when a baby wakes up in the middle of the night, it is beyond comprehension for the baby's father to get up and take care of it.
Re:Why don't they hire men? (Score:2, Insightful)
Good morning (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh really? So, so...if the rest of the world could only take this brand new revolutionary idea from the Australian mint and apply these "robots" to all kinds of industrial tasks.... oh, wait they already do since about 50 years ago [wikipedia.org]
Re:Why don't they hire men? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ahhh... I thought it was about the gender of the forklift. Now it all makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up!
Re:Why don't they hire men? (Score:4, Insightful)
That doesn't mean you aren't succeeding.
Do you really think that women are the only people kept up at night by babies?
Re:Good morning (Score:4, Insightful)
You know the modern web browser was invented 16 years ago - should we link to mosaic every time a story on FF/IE/Chrome/Safari/Opera comes up?
Re:Hrmm (Score:5, Insightful)
BUT inflation aka printing money is a way for the Printer to tax the users of that currency.
It's all part of the plan.
You see the great thing for the USA is the rest of the world uses US dollars to buy and sell stuff like oil, and zillions of other commodities and products. Even amongst themselves. Because of that very many countries end up holding billions or even trillions of US dollars.
So when the US Federal Reserve lends[1] its friends X trillion US dollars ( and they only need to pay back 'later' when convenient), it's actually a way of taxing everyone else.
Now the US citizens should be happy if they get their share of the printed money as well, but if they don't they really should do something about it.
In contrast when Mugabe in Zimbabwe prints money, only the people using Zimbabwe currency are hurt. Which means the rest of the world is mostly unaffected.
[1] Or allegedly "lose track" of it :).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXlxBeAvsB8 [youtube.com]
http://www.graysonforcongress.com/newsitem.asp?NewsId=90 [graysonforcongress.com]
http://www.graysonforcongress.com/newsitem.asp?NewsId=91 [graysonforcongress.com]
Re:Why don't they hire men? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good morning (Score:4, Insightful)
I laughed at those words for a different reason: it's the kind of nonsense you get from people who have never dealt with robotics before.
Although accurate, the indicated behaviour of robots is hardly a virtue. If a human kept doing the same task in the same way, regardless of the consequences, we'd call them stupid, and that's exactly what robots are.
I think von Braun said it best: Using robots is a lot like having a wife. She helps you solve the problems you wouldn't have had if you hadn't gotten married.
Re:I don't believe a word of it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh you're absolutely right. I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But obviously there is some ulterior motive for automating this workforce to such an extent.
No, they're simply trying to be more efficient. You know, like all the other tens of thousands of companies that have automated themselves.
Hauling around money isn't particularly difficult, dangerous or precision work.
They're hauling coins around. Drums of them. You know coins, those thing made out of metal. That heavy dense stuff that does bad things if it accidentally falls on your foot, right? Like the summary says it's boring repetitive work and humans aren't really made for that. Machines are.
I wonder if you're the same type of person who complains about government inefficiency and waste of money. Or do you maybe believe in some sort of quasi-communist system where everyone works and ten people do the job of one guy just to make sure of that?
But it is frightening to think about how much financial engineering has gone on in recent years. Printing money is literally no longer necessary in order to inflate the currency. Credit limits can be increased electronically. Paychecks are direct-deposited. It's just bank balances, like you say.
So moving from paper bank balances to electronic balances, with twenty backups including paper, somehow makes things infinitely worse? I mean, you do know that it's all been little figures stored somewhere for well over a century if not longer, right? Go look up the great depression on wikipedia if your history classes were that deficient.
Re:I don't believe a word of it... (Score:1, Insightful)
Whoa. Handling money is seriously expensive for exactly those reasons. If we could get rid of physical money (without the side-effects) that would be a huge boost to the economy. The mint is of course only a tiny part of that but still big money...
Re:Hrmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why don't they hire men? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. I work with kids on a regular basis and either you're a troll or you've never had experience with kids.
A good parent interacts with his or her young child ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. It's more than a full time job if you're doing it right. Childrens' minds need constant interaction for their minds to develop properly. It's how they learn to interact with other human beings and otherwise function in society. As children get older, their friends and classmates start to take some of the load off the parents, but that takes years. The first several years of a child's life are critical and the parents are the major influence.
When I eventually have kids, I will do everything possible to make sure either I or the mother is home for at least the first several years of their lives. Not that it's impossible for a child to be well-adjusted without a full-time parent, but it's certainly harder. I see it all the time; the ones with active parents are, almost across the board, more attentive and better behaved. They tend to get along with other children better, too.
To summarize: It's not necessarily the physical work (though there's more to that than you're acknowledging). It's the interaction with the child that's important.
Re:Why don't they hire men? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't lose your whole life, that's the militant feminist rant talking. Your life changes, that's all.
Then again, it changes every time there's a major event. Marriage, new job, car crash, theft, death of family member. I've heard a few women complain about losing their life to marriage. While I agree that you lose your former life, that doesn't mean you don't get a new one in return. People complain about losing their life to ailing family members. People complain a lot (human condition).
Death is the only item where you really lose your life. The rest is what you make out of it. For everyone that weeps a tear for the days of lesser responsibility, there's a person who would never go back to how it was. If you don't want to have a child, that's fine. If you want to not be bothered by someone else, then don't have a child, husband, family, etc. I'm not being facetious, not everyone is cut out to live like everyone else.
Likening a child to a cancer is just silly, unless I can call you, your parents, your bothers, and sisters cancers. In that case, you've mis-defined cancer; we all call that life.
The irony is that children are the only future which really will keep you in mind after you are gone. Eventually that won't last, but if you want a longer future than the one you will experience, you need to put your stamp on things that will outlast you.