Toyota to Employ Advanced Robots 360
olegalexandrov writes "Toyota Motor will introduce robots which can work as well or better than humans at all 12 of its factories in Japan to cut costs and deal with a looming labor shortage. The robots would be able to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously with their two arms, achieving efficiency unseen in human workers and matching the cheap wages of Chinese laborers, a report said on Thursday." The Motley Fool has a humorous take, and Toyota emphasizes that goodlife, err, humans will continue to have a place in Toyota factories.
Droids (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Droids (Score:2)
On topic, this reminds me of 1995's Ghost In The Shell:
We see all science fiction as just that-- fiction, until the clock advances.
All too soon (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you have stairs in your auto factory? (Score:2, Funny)
Pushing AND shoving are the answer. Toyota will protect you from the terrible secret of space.
Lower wages (Score:2, Insightful)
The world already has robots... (Score:2)
The world already has robots, unfortunately they are human.
Something in the Chinese culture produces people who are too willing to accept this.
Re:Lower wages (Score:2)
What?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
For a Japanese manufacturer, outsourcing to Detroit probably doesn't represent a cost savings or an efficiency boost.
You don't have to pay benefits to a robot, and they work longer shifts.
North American workers simply aren't willing to view themselves as cheap labour to pick up the slack from more expensive places to do manufacturing.
Re:What?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you say that in Spanish?
Re:What?!?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not true. Several Japanese automobile manufacturers assemble in the U.S. a large number of the cars they sell in North America. Toyota does it (my 4runner was built in their plant in Kentucky). Honda and Nissan do it. However, they do NOT do it in Michigan, due to the low quality of the workforce there, and the strength of the UAW in that state. Car stickers (at least in California) are required to state what country the car was assembled in, as well as what country the majority of the parts were manufactured in (usually Japan).
Re:What?!?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. They do manufacture there. I'm too lazy to google at this point, but I'm fairly sure that's to comply with domestic labour tarriffs and duties. I'm prety sure here in Canada it closes a loophole for domestic production numbers. I've certainly grown up knowing this is why -- if a comp
Re:What?!?! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What?!?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Goodlife? (Score:2)
Re:Goodlife? (Score:2)
"The Radiant Doors" by Michael Swanwick
creepy as all hell- and on the topic for a change
Rise of the Machines (Score:4, Funny)
AARGHH (Score:3, Funny)
disturbing, yes? (Score:5, Funny)
robot1: "you got e-served"
robot2: "oh, it's (ON)/OFF"
Re:disturbing, yes? (Score:2)
Let me break it down. from urbandictionary.com
6. you got served
1. A slang expression that is usually used when someone proves that they are better than someone else.
2. Another way of saying "You just got owned" or "Pwned!"
1. its on
a term commonly used when, after being served, you serve them back. once this is done, then ITS ON!
Will these robots be buying Toyotas also (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:here's a link to a wsj from aug 4, 2004 about (Score:3, Informative)
Its a link for non-subscribers(took some digging to find this article but thanks to copernic.)
WSJ.com - As Toyota Closes In on GM, Quality Concerns Also Grow [clickability.com]
looming (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:looming (Score:5, Informative)
I think that ``looming labor shortage'' refers to their looming demographic crisis [foreignaffairs.org].
Japan's population is aging fast. They're getting older at the rate of one year per year, of course, but they aren't breeding fast enough to replace themselves. That's going to have lots of effects on Japan, most of them bad. One of those bad effects will be a labor shortage. You see, the number of people who are both willing and physically able to work is going to fall off as the current generation of workers gets too old to work.
Europe is facing the same problem, and they're dealing with it via gastarbeiters [google.com]. Apparently, Japan is going to deal with it using robots.
Re:looming (Score:3, Informative)
The rejection of guest workers is a carefully considered policy in Japan. There are some disadvantages to losing a common culture, as the Dutch [bbc.co.uk], the Germans [dw-world.de], and the French [arabnews.com] are discovering. Can't say I blame the aging Japanese for not wanting to deal with cultural strife or learn Tagolog or Mandarin in their dotage. But pardon me, I'm off to my Spanish class...
Re:looming (Score:3, Interesting)
The weather in Japan is nice enough. The winters are much more comfortable than the east coast of the US.
Natural disasters? What kind of crack are you smoking? The US has hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes, you know. I've lived in Japan for most of my life and I haven't seen any natural disasters that affected me personally.
Japan is expensive, but the pay is much higher to compensate. Guest workers in Japan are among the "richest" in terms of money the
Re:looming (Score:2)
Hehe, this is actually quite funny. 'Labor' in russian is 'robota' so talking about Russia and 'robot shortage', in article about 'labor shortage' seems to have double meaning... :)
Wrong context... (Score:2)
Re:Wrong context... (Score:2)
I would assume that circumcision would not apply to one who has already been castrated. A failed attempt at a witty sig?
Re:Wrong context... (Score:2)
Welcome! (Score:4, Interesting)
All kidding aside, technological advancements not only displace jobs, but also create them as well. There is a small difference between paying 20 robotics engineers to develop, create, and maintain the robots exorbitant salaries as much as hiring 150 "guys off the street" to do the same stuff.
Yes, after the initial development, the costs go down, but not a whole lot. Someone needs to make sure the robots keep doing their jobs.
From TFA:
Japan has so far rejected calls to open up to large numbers of unskilled immigrants, fearing the effects on the country's social framework.
So instead of using "outsourced" labor, they remove jobs by having robots do them.... almost as bad.
Re:Welcome! (Score:2)
Right. You sustain 20 families instead of 150 families.
If you and every other factory owner have similar policies, you stand to lose roughly 130 households of potential customers... per factory. Brilliant!
Ah, Sla
Re:Welcome! (Score:3, Insightful)
But those 20 families have a higher standard of living, because they are earning the income that was previously dedicated to 30. Also, the other 100 million people in the country get a higher standard of living, because the cost of cars goes down. (competition means they are trying to undercut the other guy, and now they can!) In some cases costs of transportation accounts for 60% (not made up, but I don't know where to verify it either) of a familys income.
Re:Welcome! (Score:3, Insightful)
That common refrain is similar to the broken window fallacy [wikipedia.org], and of course is the philosophical justifaction for sabotage. Although even some major industrialists have said otherwise, it is not overall sensible to give people money (employ them) in the hope that they give some of it back (be customers).
That's like operating a boat by installing an electric fan on the deck, aimed at the sail: the needless extra step
Re:Welcome! (Score:2)
And while I'm doing that, you take the task of convincing people to donate money to support the local fire and police departments, and then we can stop taking that money out of their paychecks!
What type of discussion is this? Someone should just link to an ethics 101 text on amazon.com and be done with it.
Re:Welcome! (Score:2)
It keeps the money from flowing out of the economy, and it keeps an equal amount from flowing into the economy!
You can't buy from Japan unless you first sell to Japan. Trade has to be a two-way street.
That's why the U.S. has such a huge trade deficit: foreigners desparately want to invest here. Therefore, to get U.S. dollars to invest in the U.S. (you wo
Re:mnb Re:Welcome! (Score:2)
The concept is correct even if the actual circumstances aren't.
It is not a case of being smart. (Score:2)
Mexifornia and Frurkey.
It is not a case of being smart. It is a case of being so mono-cultural that they cannot accept anything else. Japanese even have difficulty accepting ethnic Japanese who have lived in the U.S. for two years.
Gai-jin are people who are not like them, and the word has very negative connotations.
Strange New War? (Score:3, Interesting)
We already hear complaints that everything is "Made in China" (or Taiwan, but we shall ignore for this discussion). Ok, shoes, T-shirts, etc.,... but now cars?!?
Can China's cheap labor outdo even "Western Civilization's" tech by just throwing enough bodies at it? Toyota is scared that their non-smart bots are non-competitive against China's workforce? What next, Oracle is competing against a billion data enterers? (OK, a bit jokey).\
It just seems that a lot of stuff points back to China as a problem for many countries. [Put on tin foil hat now]
I am just wondering if there will be in the near future (or whatever future in the US's case; and yes I am American) some kind of trade war, social war (China being bad on human rights), maybe terroristic war by who knows who, or just straight out weirdness because China is becoming so powerfull by utilizing a labor method outgrown by pretty much every other world power a long time ago (ie, something akin to slavery- I know this is a powerful and loaded term, and correct, but I could not think of another suitable term that would describe some of the conditions that China lives under.
Sorry for rambling so much.
Re:Strange New War? (Score:3, Informative)
Again not "and correct", but rather "and NOT correct".
I am very, very sorry for that typo. This is a very good reason
Re:Strange New War? (Score:3, Interesting)
The reality is that we've won China over to our vision of global capitalism. No fair crying "foul" if they kick our ass at our own game.
Yes, there are some pretty disturbing human rights/social justice issues over there. But today's China is radically different from the China of just 5 years ago. In my opinion, their expanding middle class will eventually cross a threshhold where
Re:Strange New War? (Score:2)
Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto... (Score:5, Funny)
Why only two arms? (Score:2)
I think a better solution would be able to easily add or remove things like arms as needed, depending on the job.
And then there's the whole socioeconomic issues of replacing mass numbers of jobs with robots. Eventually robots will be better at most things, though not in our lifetime. Huge political and economic issues loom overhead.
Re:Why only two arms? (Score:2)
Re:Why only two arms? (Score:3, Informative)
Most manufacturing arms ar stationary devices that move product from an inventory state to a place in a production state. (from a pile of parts onto the object being assembled)
If these "two armed robots" are also able to do more than transition product from point a to point b - but say can pickup and maipulate the assembled object, retreive additional parts from shelving, or reposition themselves so they have access to the assembled object so that they can put o
Japanese Substitute Inventiveness for Immigration (Score:5, Insightful)
They are here to protect us (Score:5, Insightful)
One Economic Model Is to Rent the Robots (Score:2)
And of course the "smart" folks will put som
I am very happy that Toyota are doing this (Score:5, Insightful)
Toyota can spend more on design and less on the actuall production of vehicles, which will likely improve safety and performance of the vehicles. I hope over manufacturers follow suit. This should funnel more money into R&D for AI.
Sorry, I just rambled on with thoughts there. hmmm...
Anyone else see one of the biggest problems here? (Score:2)
It wasn't until I became a Christian that I realized th
Re:Anyone else see one of the biggest problems her (Score:2)
Re:Anyone else see one of the biggest problems her (Score:2)
Re:Anyone else see one of the biggest problems her (Score:2)
China has lots of bad stuff happening, no question, but none of it accounts for the difference in living costs and/or wages between China and the west.
[This should be obvious, but...]
As long as Chinese are 100x "poorer" than westerners, they are going to be able to produce stuff 100x cheaper. No matter what the government.
China's advantage over other poor countries (Africa comes to mind) is it's ability to unite and focus its res
Once again... (Score:3, Interesting)
Another bit: For Canada, though being one of the so called G7, only the Russian built Antonov-124 http://dptscargo.homestead.com/antonov124.html [homestead.com] could transport the enormous amounts of aid to the tsunami victims. The Canadians have nothing to rival this giant plane! We Americans are not any better because our even smaller cargo planes are more expensive to operate and require better and longer runways, and cannot self-handle! Airport workers gaped as they had never seen a plane as big with all the independence it has. I was also amazed.
I leased the new Toyota Sienna, and you know what, it's a pleasure to drive not to mention the quiet engine. When I look arround my house, almost everything I use daily is Asian made...from the cell phone to the rice cooker.
As Americans, we must wake up before it's too late.
Re:Once again... (Score:2)
It's even more grim in Canada. Ford is no longer one of the 'big three' here -- they've been pushed behind Honda in terms of volume of sales.
In all honesty, North American cars
American innovation? (Score:2)
Japan is small country that is very mountainous. There is not a lot of good land available. Everything is very crowded. There are too many people. Two hundred years ago, the samurai would keep the population at good levels by simply killing anyone and everyone they felt like killing. Didn't bow low enough? Zip... You too ugly? zip...
Japan w
Re:Once again... (Score:4, Interesting)
Americans and Japanese innovate in different ways. It's pretty much always been that way since Japan became an economic power after the occupation. Americans tend to neglect a lot of the little innovations like this that can make a big economic impact, but tend to excel in huge undertakings(Man on the Moon, the Internet etc). Japan seems to be the exact opposite. Their space programs have been an abysmal failure, and yet their consumer level technology is unrivaled. Interesting to see how different cultures react to similiar circumstances.
Re:Once again... (Score:2)
And you're confusing federal budgets with state budgets. My roads are well kept and cleared, because my town took responsiblilty for the local roads. The State keeps the Mass Pike clear and repaired.. We won't mention the Big Dig. So don't bring that up.
We lost a lot of federal money for schools when Bush took over, that's true, but we managed to build replacement schools for schools built in ~1900 and we can keep our teachers, not well paid, but paid.
Production costs (Score:2)
That cheap? Are the robots being made in China?
This will be a new industrial revolution (Score:3, Interesting)
It's true that these innovations and changes will create new jobs, but the new jobs are created for the educated people not for the people whose jobs are disappearing.
A world where there are no jobs for everyone isn't necessarily a bad thing, if societies are rearranged so that a decent living is provided for everyone and people start defining themselves not by their profession but by some other attributes.
Re:This will be a new industrial revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Get off it. It's been done before. The people were called peasants or serfs or comrades. When the people are unable to contribute to the GDP, then society has no need for the people and they are marginalized.
The global economy abstracts the whole capitalist marketplace into two camps: producers and consumers. As long there is some population somewhere that can buy your product (maybe a tiny western European nation with a small, rich population) the rest of the world can go get bent. Crank out your product with robots or slaves or serfs or peasants and make a profit.
Rampant capitalism is known as the black market and it doesn't work very well in the long run. The global economy isn't far from rampant capitalism, but it will work to some extent right up until the point where everybody's job has been replaced by a robot. Then nobody will be able to afford a new television, and the system will be in trouble.
A little international labor law and careful import/export management would be help, but one thing is for certain - this is not the path to utopia where "societies are rearranged so that a decent living is provided for everyone". This is the path to peasantry, serfdom, servitude, and slavery through debt. This is the road to a life where a communist revolution starts to sound like a good idea.
Communism is the way forward? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you implying that the waves of successive social rearrangement have made things worse for the underclass? The underclass in medieval European societies were essentially owned by the lords. The underclass during the Industrial Revolution were essentially i
Remember tradespeople (Score:2)
Don't forget that there's an entirely different category of qualified work that (usually) doesn't involve or require a degree, but is still more complex than unqualified. I can't speak for the USA, but in New Zealand
This is how to stop outsourcing (Score:2)
In the computer world, that means using processes and tools that make us vastly superior programmers. In the manufacturing world, that means using robots and devices to make one person able to do the work of hundreds.
Those who are losing their jobs to these machines only have themselves to blame. If you want a fat salary, you have
Re:This is how to stop outsourcing (Score:2)
Bender vs Apu (Score:2)
Bender takes someone's job. Slashdot crowd: Yay!!!
Re:Bender vs Apu (Score:2)
I give 'em 2 years (Score:2)
The US used to do this. Then came Reagan. (Score:2)
How will this affect build quality? (Score:2)
I'm sure we'd have less lemons and perhaps smaller gaps between components of the car. Imagine interiors with detail and quality rivaling those of hand made cars. I think this can really give Lexus a reputation for being the "high tech" luxury car.
I'd also think that this might revolutionize the mechanics of the car as well where these robots may be ab
"employ" robots? (Score:2)
Ordinary Robots == Given the ReBoot (Score:2)
In an unprecidented move, ordinary robots are being forced out of their factory working jobs to live in trailer shipping containers around the shores of Japan.
Rumors are circulating that some have resorted to join the porn industry [iamlost.com] - offshore.
Industrial Robots (Score:3, Informative)
Building anthropomorphic robots for an assembly line is (in this engineers opinion) inefficient. The tool should be matched to do the job specifically at had. Hell, Toyota was one of the companies that started the buzz in Lean Manufacturing. [optiprise.com]
I work with robots. Robots are my friends. You, sir, are no robot. Wait, I mean you, sir, are not thinking of the right robot.
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. In Japan [ipss.go.jp] the population is expected to do just that.
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:4, Funny)
"The population is always decreasing...in Japan"
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:2)
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:2)
> Yes. In Japan the population is expected to do just that.
How is this a suprise? Japan has pioneered things like Bukake, used school girls panty vending machines, and hentai tentacle pr0n. If I was a Japanese woman, I wouldn't get within 20 meters of a Japanese man, either.
Bad Immigration Laws (Score:2)
Although after seeing was a typical Tokyo apartment looks like I can understand why they'd not want more people there...
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:2)
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:2)
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:2)
I find that first google link on the method a simple read. Why can't you understand it?
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:2)
It's cheaper to use machines than it is to provide benefits and safety for human workers.
LK
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:2)
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:2)
Oh really, been to the projects lately? How about to certain western european countries? I believe your sentance should read "as long as there's an entitlement, people will lie on their asses and whine."
Now, once the fat rich queers...
Because blaming the rich brought such excellent results in the Bolshevik, Maoist, Khmer Rouge and Cuban revolutions...
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:2)
What kind of dumbass are you? The problem here is that there *aren't* enough people. Let's say you've got 10 70 year olds and 1 20 year old in the jungle. The 70 year olds are too old to do things for themselves, and the 20 year old can't provide for all the 70 year olds by himself. That's a labor shortage --- a natural one. This is precisely the problem Japan is facing, they don't have enough people to do the work th
Re:Corporate Crack (Score:2)
Re:Automation will free us (Score:2)
Re:Automation will free us (Score:2, Funny)
Let your mind be free. (Score:2)
Oh, please. If he can imagine a Butlerian Jihad, you can imagine not dying!
but we are not getting return on our investment (Score:2)
Yes.. free us from our jobs (Score:2)
Ya.. great to be alive today.
Re:Automation will free us (Score:2, Insightful)
My point is that these will be owned by big companies with the capital to buy and develop them. Then they will just rule the world even more. This is something that really scares me. Someday robots will be able to do so much that the big corporations won't need us anymore.
Re:Automation will free us (Score:2)
Re:Automation will free us (Score:2)
Re:Hah! That's easy! (Score:3, Funny)
I don't think anyone will pay you for that skill.
Re:Health care plan? (Score:2)
Re:Good (Score:2)
Nonsense. We used to be an agrarian economy, and through technology advances we no longer need to be. Do most of us have more leisure time now than the typical farmer? You'd better believe it.
Re:Future.. (Score:2)