this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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You'll never get to 100%, you still need at minimum maintenance guys for the robotics
They day will come when robots can do all the maintenance they need on each other.
Doubtful. The amount of precise manipulation needed to do something as simple as repair the feeder mechanism on a welder, is still decades away, let alone cut and install wiring, or repair a work-cell cage. While some of that is kinda possible, to be able to do it at scale and more cost effective than human labor is well into the realm of fiction, and does not reflect a realistic assessment of the state of future or current capabilities.
[me, talking out of my ass, as always]: they could like build them with a modular design so that if any part of a specific module breaks, rather than require the fine manipulation to actually fix that part, swap it out for a spare while the broken module gets sent off to actually have the damage fixed by people/whatever more specialized process
Yeah, that is theoretically possible. But having spares and modules just lying around are explicitly against the current manufacturing principles that are driving the industry, so it would require an ideological revolution for companies to adopt those ideas, let alone have robots that are manufactured in a way to accommodate that philosophy. Still doesn't quite solve the whole 'threading greasy wire' problem, but modularity would make it easier.
It just means all the delicate specialized repair could be centralized rather than have detailed and time consuming maintenance at the factory but yeah idk im not a roboticist i make a da food
It's more difficult than just the delicate operations bit.
Well, now you need a way to detach and convey the mechanism to the centralized area, cataloguing where it is, cataloguing that it has arrived, repairing it, cataloging that is has been repaired, conveying it back, and then installing it, and cataloguing that it has been delivered and installed. All possible tech, but is it worth buying the robot just for that?
And if the conveyor robot breaks down, is there another robot to repair the conveyor robot, etc? You have to apply the worst case scenario, because there is a non-zero chance it will happen.
No you don't need to do all that you just have it hucked in a bin and shipped out to where people or specialized machines do all that
Literally the requirement is having bins big enough for the parts to be thrown into and that can be moved around but at that point you have just have a crane robot convey everything. I guess at some point that might break but at least all the other specialized maintenance and the potential for loss of time in operation as shit gets fixed gets off loaded to the actual repair facility. So you'd just need 1 dude who could fix a crane robot i guess
All you've done is define the method of conveyance as 'bin' and 'crane robots', you still have to catalogue everything, which hey, is how Amazon does their packaging conveyance in their robotic cell warehouses. So we are now in current technological reality, which is great! So is it one bin per part or are there also robots to sort through the bins? I think the former is currently easier than the latter, but the latter could be possible in the coming years. Then we just need to create automation to repair those robots as well, etc. etc.
If we still need one dude to repair the crane robot, or more likely the repair robots, that means we aren't at 100% automation, which I have been assured, is within our lifetimes, despite the fact that this has been the gap for automation since Oliver Evan made the automated flour mill in 1785. Maybe it will happen, but the odds are significantly against it, even as industry pushes forward.
Idk i don't think you're thinking of what i'm describing how i'm describing it
Maybe, maybe not. If you are interested in robotics though, you should look into pursuing it, even at a hobby level. Even Lego kit sets are incredibly useful for understanding this field. Cheers.