Automated production line in modern factory.

Every few weeks, Robohub will post a roundtable chat and discuss an engaging topic relating to robotics. In this edition, we looked at the controversial job loss of 60K jobs by Foxconn. Is this substantial job loss a preview to come with automation, or largely overblown hype? We strongly encourage our Robohub readers to chime in and be part of the conversation!

This chat features Sabine Hauert, Andra Keay, Kassie Perlongo, Yannis Erripis, John Payne, providing a range of perspectives from research, business, and the general public.

Automation cutting jobs. Robots stealing jobs. The loss of human workers. How many times have different iterations appeared in the media with these all too similar headlines? When news broke about Foxconn cutting 60,000 jobs from their factory, mass speculation spread like wildfire. Chinese companies say they are looking to combine people with robotics, and that it will improve product quality whilst also ensure labour supply is not a factor to production. So, is China looking at a long-term gain, with a short-term loss, so they can continue to make their own products on their mainland?

Once the offshore labour capital of the world, China has rising costs and a higher standard of living, making it difficult to find workers. President Xi Jinping called for an “industrial robot revolution” in 2014, looking to place automation’s role in raising productivity. Due to this, Chinese companies are turning to robots, announcing measures — such as subsidies and tax incentives — to encourage ‘more industrial automation and development of home-grown robotics.’ By the end of this year, China will overtake Japan to be the world’s biggest operator of industrial robots, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), an industry lobby group.

But back to Foxconn. After the news broke, they released a statement: “We are applying robotics engineering and other innovative manufacturing technologies to replace repetitive tasks previously done by employees, and through training, also enabling our employees to focus on higher value-added elements in the manufacturing process, such as research and development, process control and quality control. We will continue to harness automation and manpower in our manufacturing operations, and we expect to maintain our significant workforce in China.”

The company still employs more than 1.2 million people. If businesses grow more efficient and competitive due to robotics, are robots in some ways helping to prevent businesses from shutting down, with potentially more people losing jobs? Some tasks currently done by humans can be automated at low-cost while others, such as fine manipulation or visual inspection, will require sophisticated hardware and software to mechanise.

The roundtable began by discussing how robotics alleviates risk with people working in dirty, dangerous conditions. And also how this plays into the government’s plan to infuse capital into the mainland robotics industry over the next few years.

“The increase in automation is partly due to the increase in labour costs, but it is also in response to things that happened, like the factory explosion due to unsafe working conditions, killing people. The government pledged 2 billion yuan in subsidies for companies to install industrial robotics and production lines,” said Andra.

“I remember reading exposés about terrible working conditions. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to be introducing robots,” said Andra. “It may be ‘viewed’ as threatening, but it can be beneficial. So instead of people being pushed into horrible working conditions, robots will take care of it,” said Andra.

((As an aside, Foxconn echoes similar concerns, with Day Chia-Peng, general manager of Foxconn’s automation technology development committee, saying that the company was motivated to focus on this area due to safety concerns and manpower shortages in recent years.))

“There are always going to be people working in some of the most dangerous jobs in society, so there’s a question of whether robotics can improve the quality of some of the worst jobs for these people,” Andra continued.

“People often forget how difficult it is to make a robot. The goal is not to make robots that replace humans, but robots that work alongside humans, performing specific tasks. There is a large push to develop collaborative robots (cobots) that are easy to program and deploy by workers. This will allow the workers to focus on more fulfilling high-level tasks that require human-level cognition, and the robots, to focus on specific repetitive tasks,” said Sabine.

The roundtable also discussed China’s strategy for investing and utilising industrial robotics. As noted by the Financial Times, their working age population is expected to fall from one billion people last year to 960 million in 2030, and 800 million by 2050. Automation can be a way to fill the labour gap.

“China has increased their robotics to 1 million robots in 2 years,” said Andra. “The number of robots of China is increasing. They have a middle class that is ageing, and they are expecting a higher standard of living and a higher quality of job. The cost of labour in China has increased, and manufacturing has shifted to other parts of the world.”

“What we’re seeing today, is that robots introduced in factories have contributed overall to an increase in productivity. Higher production leads to more jobs down the road in other sectors such as sales, customer support, and for the overall deployment, installation, maintenance, and management of high-tech factories. While it’s true that the nature of work might change, the net number of jobs may not necessary decrease. The question is how to retrain workers,” said Sabine.

The roundtable mentions that China has relied on a seemingly endless supply of cheap labour for decades to power its economic expansion. “Fast forward to today and the production of robots and China is now the largest consumer of industrial robots and is approaching becoming one of the largest producers,” said Andra.

“Is there also a problem that it’s all happening too quickly and not a gradual pace for people to find new jobs?” asked Kassie.

“I think the pace the automation is increasing, but we’re still talking about a fairly small density,” said Andra.

“One hope is that the jobs of tomorrow are more fulfilling. The nature of work has always evolved, driven in part by the introduction of technology. We don’t manually wash our clothes anymore, and I don’t see why we should be performing the same repetitive task on an assembly line either,” said Sabine.

“Job displacement doesn’t mean everyone needs to become an engineer, although we are very much in need for more people, especially women, in the STEM fields. There is also room for jobs that profoundly build on human interactions and creativity. In fact, I hope all professions will become more human,” said Sabine.

“Augmented reality will make training easier and human workers more effective,” said John. “By replacing shortages of health care professionals (not doctors) robots can help here — replacing tasks, not replacing jobs. I don’t think we have to leave people out of the meaningful economy. Eyes, brains, and hands are wonderful things. Add augmented reality and you have a powerful combination.”

Final thoughts…

In 2013, the most widely noted report on the subject came from Oxford University’s Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” However, a new report has also been making waves. The report from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “The Risk of Automation for Jobs in OECD Countries: A Comparative Analysis,” by Melanie Arntz, Terry Gregory, and Ulrich Zierahn, finds that there actually will be jobs for people, but still foresees difficulties, particularly for low-skilled workers. It’s also important to note that these reports do not specifically discuss robotics, but also software automation.

Also, just because something can be automated doesn’t mean it necessarily will be. Although we have current technology to purchase coffee by machine, there are still people lining up at coffee houses, like Starbucks, to order their favourite brew. The human aspect is more important.

Finally, the robotic component of this overhaul in China will be about more than just installing more robots in manufacturing plants; and perhaps, robots shouldn’t be seen as a cure-all solution for the nation’s labour shortages and economic slowdown.

Read some of our previous Robohub roundtables below:

• Robohub roundtable: Why is it so difficult to define ‘robot’?
• Robohub roundtable: Robotics and space exploration

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

In an article about the pace of sales for the SoftBank Pepper robot, the China Post reported that Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision (AKA Foxconn) has sent a team of 30 to survey the US market for future acquisitions of robot production firms.

On December 27th in Japan, another 1,000 of the $1,600 Pepper robots were sold online in just one minute  — this makes 7,000 sales in the past 7 months. The next sale date is January 28th. Foxconn is currently producing 10 Pepper robots per hour at factories in Yantai (Shandong Province, China) and is working to improve efficiency and raise production to 15 per hour.

The Pepper app store for add-on applications offers a range of more than 200 free and paid apps. These apps range from quiz games, English picture books, hairstyle and clothing chat games, timers, dance instruction, lie detection, brain games, exercise trainers, animal sounds, food apps like beef bowl and noodle shop locators, piano playing, baseball talking, English for kids and many more.

Pepper, created initially by France-based Aldebaran to act as a “social companion for humans,” is advertised by SoftBank as not only being able to read human emotions, but also to respond to emotional cues such as laughing or frowning.

Softbank recently upgraded Pepper to be able to memorize and store data on human responses by using cloud-based artificial intelligence applications developed by the company’s subsidiary, Cocoro SB.

The newsworthy part of The China Post story was Hon Hai Precision’s 30-person US delegation to explore purchasing companies that can help Foxconn increase its production of this very complex robot. Once sales expand from Japan to China (and then the rest of the world), production will need to keep pace; hence the concern and exploratory shopping trip. The joint venture between Alibaba, Foxconn and SoftBank has provided hundreds of millions of dollars for production ramp-up costs, which are likely to include money for capital expenditures such as robots and other automation devices, as well as for acquisitions of companies that make those devices.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Foxconn and Alibaba invest in SoftBank Robotics as Pepper goes on sale in Japan
• 2016 will be a pivotal year for social robots
• Nestlé 1st big buyer of Softbank’s Pepper robot
• SoftBank invests in Fetch Robotics
• Japanese telcos vie for share in consumer robot-as-a-service business

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

In a strategic move sure to have long-term ramifications, Foxconn and Alibaba each invested $118 million for a combined 40% share of the new SoftBank Robotic Holdings Group, an entity which holds Aldebaran, Pepper and the Pepper SDK software group. Starting June 20, Pepper robots will go on sale to businesses and consumers in Japan. 

For $1,600 plus a monthly Internet connection fee of $120 and a monthly maintenance contract of $80, you too can have a Pepper and access to over 200 apps to help make it useful.

According to Tim Hornyak of IDG News Service:

Pepper has rudimentary hand function and can grasp light objects. In a recent demo, the robot was handing out packets of tissues, grabbing them from containers attached to its waist and proffering them to people nearby.

That’s actually something done by countless human workers in Japan. Karaoke parlors and other establishments trying to grab commuters’ attention print ads on tissue packets and pay people to hand them out at subway stations.

Years ago I talked with Joe Engelberger, considered to be the founder of American robotics, about his thesis that he could build a robot to assist seniors for $750K. Bottom line: he didn’t want money from investors or VC funds; he wanted money from deep-pocket players who were in the business. He wanted Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, GE and Medtronic — companies that already had penetrated the marketing chain and the manufacturing of healthcare devices AND that had deep-pockets for the long haul of bringing the product to market and then supporting it and growing the product line.

In a move that mimics Engelberger’s sentiment, SoftBank just sold 40% of its SoftBank Robotics Holding Group (SRH) to Foxconn and Alibaba (20% to each) in return for $118 million from each. SRH is the entity containing SoftBank’s robotic assets: Aldebaran, Pepper and the Pepper SDK software effort. It is also possible that SoftBank’s recent investment in Fetch Robotics might be included in SRH.

Foxconn is already ramping up to do the manufacturing for the Pepper robot. SoftBank earlier announced that Nestle purchased 1,000 Peppers for their Japanese stores and that SoftBank’s retail stores were also getting 1,000. Once Pepper expands beyond Japan, the next most likely target is China — and Alibaba is the biggest name in marketing in China.

Alibaba invented Singles Day, a day like Mother’s Day but for people who are single — a big group in China. It turned out to be a very successful marketing ploy that caught on with consumers. Proving the power of Alibaba’s marketing might, last November 11th, on Singles Day, ECOVACS sold over 70,000 robotic vacuum cleaners online exclusively through Alibaba!

The $236 million in investment funds are certainly enough to scale up manufacturing, software and marketing if not for this year’s Singles Day, then certainly for 2016.

This effort by SoftBank and its new partners into consumer robotics is massive in forethought and a welcome confirmation that social robots will be a big thing in the near future.

Yesterday SoftBank, FoxConn and Alibaba cemented a strong robotics initiative. Having acquired a majority stake in Aldebaran in 2012 (just after the Amazon acquisition of Kiva), SoftBank’s interest in robots has been cause for confusion. Do they want an ‘emotional’ humanoid robot or is their interest in Aldebaran a pathway towards a more practical robot?

Well, it looks like SoftBank is interested in everything robotic, as they lead the $20 million A round in logistics company Fetch Robotics and announce a joint robotics production partnership with Alibaba and FoxConn. The new SoftBank Robotics Holdings Corp. (SBRH) is valued at $590 million, with Alibaba and FoxConn paying $118 million each for 20% stakes in SBRH.

SoftBank, Alibaba and Foxconn will “build a structure to bring Pepper and other robotics businesses to global markets, and cooperate with the aim of spreading and developing the robotics industry on a worldwide scale.” said the SoftBank release. And Pepper, will finally go on sale to customers on June 20 after delays from projected availability in early 2015. Pepper will cost 198,000 yen (approx $1610) plus a monthly service fee.

Pepper has already appeared in SoftBank and Nestle stores in Japan. This next step could see Pepper in your home, although SoftBank believes that the primary initial customers will be institutional. With Japan’s aging population serving as an inspiration point, SoftBank have been exploring applications for Pepper in nursing homes, for example, conversing with patients with dementia.

Masayoshi Son, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank, said, “Since foundation, we have followed our corporate philosophy of ‘Information Revolution – Happiness for everyone.’ I am very excited that we will partner with Alibaba and Foxconn, and challenge to go global with our robotics business, including Pepper, as a first step to realize our vision. To bring more smiles to people around the world, we will aim to be the No.1 robotics company.”

Pepper is just the first step. Remember Terry Gou’s famous “1 million robots in FoxConn factories by 2014” statement? When Gou made the plan in 2011, finding 1 million factory robots would have meant doubling the number of industrial robots in the world. With the world coming out of an economic slump, Gou’s plan was too ambitious at the time. However, industrial robotics has been growing rapidly ever since, and nowhere faster than in China. At the same time, the cost of robotics systems is lowering and the range of applications for industrial and now service and logistics robots is increasing.

Terry Gou, Founder and CEO of Foxconn Technology Group, said, “Foxconn is pleased to be partnering with SoftBank and Alibaba as part of our effort to drive the advancement of robotics engineering. This is a strategic area of focus for our company as we continue to advance our capabilities in intelligent manufacturing and realize our Industry 4.0 vision.” He added, “As a leading global technology company, Foxconn is committed to investing in innovation that enables us to deliver cutting-edge solutions to our customers and that supports our goal of leveraging technology to bring greater convenience to the lives of consumers around the world.”

It’s clear that Gou realized that the world couldn’t build robots fast enough to meet his demand in 2011 and that the demand was only going to increase. FoxConn, Alibaba and SoftBank are the emerging dragons of robotics. Unicorns swept the tech world by storm last year after Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures, wrote a data-rich analysis of fast growth startups with mega valuations. Since then, some have looked a little further and found ‘dragons’ to be more rewarding. By some accounts a dragon company is one that returns 100% of fund value to a fund – or by some other accounts – it’s a company with a real $1B, and not just a $1B valuation.

Amazon’s acquisition of Kiva Systems for $775m in 2012 was the first shot in a campaign that is just ramping up. Google’s purchase of eight robotics and AI companies in 2013 left many people excited, but it was the forays into robotics by Facebook, Uber and other more stealthy companies that got me excited. Unicorn or Dragon – there are a lot of young companies with bucket loads of cash and a very loose understanding of what their grown up status is. If they stay true to their startup selves, their sole mission is to grow like crazy – see Paul Graham’s seminal 2012 piece “Startup = Growth” . Investing in robotics may not be a strategy so much as a byproduct.

Sadly, cementing this initiative may be the final sinking of Aldebaran, the visionary robotics company we used to know. All the other robots, including NAO, have been shelved in favor of Pepper, and SoftBank has taken over all the software development, leading to big staff cuts at Aldebaran. Rude Baguette quoted an anonymous Aldebaran executive as saying; “If we were paranoid, we’d say that FoxConn stole the hardware, SoftBank stole the software, and Aldebaran was sucked dry.”

While the globalization of robotics is good in the short term, I hope that SoftBank’s initiatives lead to more innovation in robotics and robotics businesses. Globalization will drive growth, but only up to a point. It’s what Peter Thiel describes as “1 to n”, where “n” is always finite. In his book, Zero to One, Thiel describes the importance of the new opportunity.

• Japan’s new robotics push: Funding and deregulation
• Chinese shopping for global robotics ventures
• Sino-Russian robotics boosted as Skolkovo signs $200M deal with Chinese investment fund
• China takes long view in funding robotics, innovation
• Why is Japan the first to get Dyson’s new 360 Eye?
• SoftBank invests in Fetch Robotics
• Nestlé 1st big buyer of Softbank’s Pepper robot
•  Bruno Maisonnier moves on from Aldebaran
• Foxconn and Google cooperating to make robots

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

The Fu Jiang robot slices dough into long, thin noodles that are ready to be cooked.

Early in 2014 Foxconn invested $25 million in Fu Jiang Robot Technology, a Shenzhen robot maker which had a dough-slicing device that was beginning to sell.

According to the Want China Times, Foxconn is offering that robot – now called Fu Jiang – to the restaurant industry initially working in concert with a company that runs a chain of restaurants utilizing those robots.

The resulting robot slices dough into long thin noodles ready to be cooked. The Fu Jiang robot automatically cleans its blades and has higher specs than when initially offered.

MacRumors has done a roundup of iPhone 6 rumors, and reported that the new phone will come in two models: 4.7” and 5.5”, and will be released starting this September.

The new phone will be faster¹, lighter, and thinner than the iPhone 5S. Other features may include image stabilization for the camera, support for the faster 802.11ac wifi standard, and fingerprint sensors. And Foxconn will utilize at least 10,000 robots in the manufacturing process.

MacDailyNews reports that “Foxconn parent company Hon Hai is set to deploy an army of 10,000 assembly-line robots to help meet the demands of producing the iPhone 6 … Hon Hai CEO Terry Gou revealed in a recent shareholder meeting that Apple would be the very first customer of Foxconn’s latest robots . . . Named ‘Foxbots,’ each robot will be able to assemble an average of 30,000 devices and costs anywhere from $20,000 to $25,000 to make. Gou stated that the assembly devices are undergoing their final testing phase.”

“Robots are going to enhance and speed up the manufacturing process,” said Tim Bajarin, CEO of market research firm Creative Strategies in an interview in The Week.” The really big issue here is that the demand for the iPhone continues to grow. It’s grown every quarter since it came out. From a business standpoint, it makes sense. When you are dealing with creating millions of smart phones per month, efficiency is critical. Robotics gives you that level of efficiency, which in the end, is very important for the bottom line.”

________________________

¹ The CPU chip won’t be manufactured by Samsung. Instead, it will likely be a 20-nanometer A8 chip from TSMC with an expected 30+% improvement over the iPhone 5S chip.

In a crowded back room at AUTOMATICA 2014 in Munich, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) sponsored a panel of prominent robot users explaining their needs to a panel of executives representing all the prominent robot manufacturers.

The panel was moderated by Ken Fouhy of VDI Nachrichten, a German newspaper and web portal for technology news in the EU. The two robot users were Stefan Baginski representing BMW and Dr. Chia Day from Foxconn; the robot executives were Manfred Gundel from KUKA, Olaf Kramm from Fanuc, Stefan Lampa from ABB, Manfred Stern from Yaskawa and Jiegao Wang, from Estun Robotics.

The dialogue was spirited, direct, and kept on point by the moderator. It was particularly informative on three topics:

• Foxconn’s Dr. Day explained his company’s “million robot deployment” in context.
• BMW’s Baginski described situations that could add significant numbers to BMW’s robot population.
• The newly formed Chinese Robot Industry Alliance (CRIA) had a booth at AUTOMATICA and an executive from a Chinese robot manufacturer was on the user/maker panel, confirming that China is now the largest buyer of robots and their government is stimulating an in-country robotics industry.

FOXCONN AND THE MILLION ROBOTS

Dr. Day, VP and GM of Foxconn’s Shenzhen facilities, described in careful detail where robots are needed in their factories, what tasks they need to do, what hurdles there are, and, to some extent, what they are doing in-house. Their most immediate need is in core tasks associated with electronics assembly such as machining, polishing, painting, laser welding, die casting, palletizing and inspections. Automated assembly will come later he said. He described the major difference between an auto company and a consumer product manufacturer: the length of time production “lines” stay in play; car company lines often last for 7 years while most electronic production lines change yearly or more often. Hence the need for flexibility in deployment, cost efficiency, and ease of programming and re-programming.

Dr Day said that Foxconn has grown to 1.2 million workers and the logistics, turnover and ancillary problems and activities involved with that massive workforce had prompted Foxconn’s Chairman Terry Gou to say that Foxconn would deploy 1 million robots to help reduce and control the numbers, manage the problems better while increasing quality, and eliminate the dull, dirty and dangerous tasks that contributed to labor problems in the past.

He suggested that the media was more interested in the few instances of labor troubles than in the amazing technologies, capabilities and components the company provided and offered; that the media often incorrectly reported non-stories. For example, the flurry of stories about Google and Foxconn having an “agreement to cooperate” was unknown to him. He read more about it in the press than he heard about it from within Foxconn.

When queried about the fact that Foxconn has a line of robots that it manufactures, he explained that Foxbots were for internal use only and for material handling, for tool and die making, and for integrating from more costly purchased systems. They decided to make Foxbots solely for economic reasons. He also said that right now Foxconn utilized about 50,000 “traditional” robots, had an additional 50,000 automation devices that might be called robots, and about 500,000 not-robotic but intelligent automation devices mostly of its own creation. “Surprisingly forthright comments from a very interesting proponent of automated manufacturing,” said moderator Ken Fouhy.

BMW MAY INCREASE THEIR ROBOT POPULATION IF…

BMW’s Stefan Baginski talked about BMW’s experimenting with collaborative robots, particularly the ones from Universal Robots, for assembly and other tasks not previously robotized but that are ergonomically challenging for their employees. Thus far the human-robot interaction at their Spartanburg plant in South Carolina, and resulting productivity enhancement, has been successful and, if it continues, Baginski can foresee increasing BMW’s present robot population of 7,500 by a third to 10,000 within the next 3 years.

All the robot makers talked of co-robots and the issues involved but few had actual products for sale such as the ones from Universal Robots, particularly at Universal’s low price point ($30,000).

One fascinating question was whether the makers used human-robot-interaction robotics in their own manufacturing process. They all use robots to make robots. ABB said that they used their 2-armed FRIDA robot internally but for experimental purposes only; Olaf Kramm from Fanuc said:

“We have three times more robots in our production than humans. That’s the difference – we are able to provide high-quality sophisticated robots beyond automotive and general industry for the same price level that the others do when they produce in China,”

CHINA, CRIA AND CHINA-MADE ROBOTS

China has become the largest buyer of robotics buying one in five robots sold in 2013, a total of 36,560, according to the IFR. Rising wages, government stimulus, and growing competition from other emerging economies have been the drivers and 60% of the demand has come from the auto industry. There’s lots of room for this growth to continue: China had just 23 robots for every 10,000 people employed in manufacturing compared with 396 in Korea, 332 in Japan and 273 in Germany. Their brochure showing members of CRIA (China Robot Industry Alliance) was a hot take-away from their booth at AUTOMATICA.

Wang Jiegao, from China’s Estun Robotics, said:

“Labour costs are rising [in China] so there are a large number of enterprises that need automation. The challenge is to do that for small and medium-sized enterprises . . . as they have limited money for investment.”

HUMAN-ROBOT COLLABORATION

Hence the reason why robot manufacturers all over the world are focused on making their newer robots easier to program, operate, maintain, and that they be able to collaborate with humans. This slide from the presentation describes it well:

When you’re shopping for the best online deals you’re probably not thinking much about the massive distribution network required to bring that pair of shoes to your doorstep. Is your quest for the best possible deal helping to usher in the next wave of automation?

Internet giants like Amazon and Google have an obligation to stay competitive and are going head-to-head over the online shopping space. Customers choose to purchase the lowest priced product, without loyalty to any online e-tailer, and expect fast shipping and handling. Amazon and Google appear to have two strategies for staying competitive: improving their search experience and decreasing inefficiencies in their supply chain. For the latter strategy, both companies have publicized their interest in robotics – and have invested heavily.

The manufacturing sector has relied on robotics and automation for several decades. In many sectors, productivity has increased while employment levels diverged, leading many people to assume “robots kill jobs.” Technology has been displacing workers for the past century, but I have not heard of a customer who has voluntarily purchased a more expensive product in order to reward a company for their inefficient operations. Robotics and automation are the link between data and the physical world, and automation technology is required for the production of complex products, but the hypocrisy between “having our cake, and eating it too” has put robot companies in an awkward position: automation has advanced the human race with wonderful products, but many people say they would rather throw that productivity away in order to keep their jobs.

Humans live in a physical world: we touch, hold, and eat physical things – so society needs to accept that as long as we demand inexpensive goods and services, companies will choose to automate a process the moment a technology becomes available. This strive for efficiency is constant, ongoing, and cannot be stopped  – even if jobs are displaced in the process.

New robotics companies are finding it difficult to attract investors – especially if their robot can’t be put under a Christmas tree. The online storefronts that Silicon Valley investors have fallen for are subject to market commoditization, and the only way to compete is to make the physical world, production and distribution, more efficient. Due to rising wages and physical limitations on the human body, this cannot be achieved with pure manual labor. In my experience, investors have noticed Amazon’s acquisition of Kiva Systems and are beginning to realize that the backbone of internet shopping lies with automating factories and warehouses.

According to a recent New York Times article: “Google’s robotics effort is not something aimed at consumers. Instead, the company’s expected targets are in manufacturing — like electronics assembly, which is now largely manual — and competing with companies like Amazon in retailing, according to several people with specific knowledge of the project.” In fact, Google just announced a partnership with Foxconn for electronics assembly.

Fuel and labor costs are having a direct effect on Amazon Prime’s pricing, and Amazon announced a rise in prices that provoked a negative reaction by shareholders. I stretch to suggest a large percentage of customers who enjoy Amazon Prime’s free or inexpensive shipping also complain about robots taking jobs – a counter-productive opinion for a society that wants lower priced products but cannot accept the employment ramifications.

Amazon and Google are in competition and both will use robots for a more efficient supply chain. All companies will automate processes when the appropriate technology becomes available. Technical improvements are constantly sought after, manual labor is not, so companies will always demand robots as an alternative to having a less efficient workforce. Folks who choose to educate themselves and gain the necessary skills will always find a job. My wish for all people is they get to spend their lives instigating the projects they find most meaningful and do what people (not robots) are best at: imagining a better world, designing the future, and making amazing things happen.

Perhaps when Google and Amazon has elimiated shipping and handling costs, we can find some room in our wallet to donate $1 of every internet purchase back to our education system.

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in:

• Big deals: What it means to have the giants investing in robotics
• 7 consumer robots to look out for from CES 2014
• The economic impact of the robotic revolution
• The death of search (or, My dysfunctional relationship with Siri)
• Foxconn and Google cooperating to make robots

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

In a Wall Street Journal story by Lorraine Luk, Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou met with Google Robotics Division Andy Rubin in Taipei recently and they discussed new robotic technologies. Gou was excited by new automation technologies demonstrated by Rubin. Rubin asked Gou to help integrate the robotic companies that Google acquired to target the areas of manufacturing and electronics assembly that Google plans for their future.

Foxconn and Google are calling this collaboration (which has been going on since last year) a “cooperation.” The Wall Street Journal said that the cooperation was focused on improving robotic automation to compete with companies like Amazon in retailing.

“Foxconn needs Google’s help to step up automation at its factories as the company has the lowest sales per employee among the contract makers, given its large workforce,” said Wanli Wang, an analyst at CIMB Securities. “Using robots to replace human workers would be the next big thing in the technology industry. Not just Google, other major technology companies such as Microsoft and Amazon also have been developing robotics technology to capture future growth opportunities.”

Foxconn has sent some engineers to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to learn the latest manufacturing and automation technology. The company has been branching out from just being a contract manufacturer by selling various mobile accessories it has manufactured. Last August, Google purchased a number of display-related patents from Foxconn including head-mounted technology enabling superimposing of images a la Google Glass. Although the patent purchase was likely a safeguarding step to beef up Google’s patent portfolio as they near coming to market with Google Glass, it was also the beginning of a relationship between the two companies. And early 2013, Foxconn launced their new robotics research facility in Taiwan.

Source: Factory picture by Techspot.com; facetious after image by Tommytoy.typepad.com

Click to see the Foxbot brochure.

Prof. Bonev thinks that with their present line-up of Foxbots, Foxconn won’t be able to meet Chairman Gou’s timetable to deploy 1 million robots by 2015 and in fact were only able to produce and install 15-30,000 Foxbots in 2012.

The WSJ also reported on Foxconn’s lack of robot deployment progress in an article entitled: “Hon Hai Hits Obstacles in Push to Use Robots”.

But, according to Liu Kun, a spokesman for Foxconn, “We have canceled hiring entry level workers, a decision that is partly associated with our efforts in production automation.” This is what Foxconn Chairman Gou said would happen when he began the massive robot deployment program in Foxconn factories.

A version of this post originally appeared on Singularity Hub, June 6, 2012.

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher

Robot manufacturers are beginning to shift their attention from industrial to service robots.

The robotics industry is on the cusp of a major transformation. Today’s factory robots are solitary precision instruments, mimicking the repertoire of capabilities of skilled craftsmen while repeating a handful of tasks thousands of times over. But future factory robots will likely have to be capable of thousands of tasks, performing each only several times, and they will work in collaboration with humans.

Furthermore, interest in nonindustrial robots is emerging at an even quicker pace, and new and larger marketplaces are opening up as never before. But that means some pretty significant shifts in design from caged robots to adjacent workers, from stationary position to portable motion, from programming intensive to easily trainable, and from connected to autonomous robots. Even as they work to improve upon their current industrial offerings, robotics companies are closely watching demand for co-robots, which are the safe, flexible, vision-enabled and easily trainable robotic assistants that science fiction movies made culturally popular.

Thus the reinvention of robotics is fundamentally a transition from industrial robotics to service robotics, and one that is demanding flexibility and versatility beyond what is presently available.

Facing the Major Technological Challenges:

The big industrial robot manufacturers are reinventing themselves in an effort to accommodate these changing realities. Companies such as Yaskawa Electric (Motoman), KUKA, Adept Technologies, and Bosch are fighting against technological challenges and against the clock to be relevant players in the robotics industry 2.0. However, companies face three major technological challenges that are impeding this shift and will require significant breakthroughs to propel the industry forward into the era of service robotics:

1. Grasping and manipulation in human-centered and open-ended environments
2. Learning through observation of human actions
3. Interaction and natural communication, including gestures and sounds

Examining the strategies and unique approaches of companies making this transition can lend insight into how manufacturers will overcome the technological challenges, position themselves among competitors, and bring new robots quickly to market.

Four Strategies for Transitioning from Industrial to Service and Co-Robotics:

• KUKA:

• YASKAWA ELECTRIC (MOTOMAN):

Graphic from Yaskawa.co.jp website.

Yaskawa is developing a line of robotic products to fill the “Robotics Human Assist Business.” The SME marketplace is included in their plan as are new market areas where robotic devices augment and assist humans. Their plan covers workers, seniors, disabled people, and early adopters of other human-assist products.

On a recent visit to Tokyo, I met with Dr. Koji Tomita, Manager, Smart Robotics Center, Kazuo Miyazawa, General Manager, Smart Robotics Center and Shingo Ando, Manager, RT Control Technology Team (from left to right) and they showed me SmartPal V, a prototype for their next generation human assist robot.

Yaskawa is already marketing their two-armed Motoman multi-tasking robots and expects to begin introducing additional products and capabilities in 2015. They recently restructured their R&D by creating a new Smart Robotics Center (SRC) with the mission of accelerating R&D to enable human assist products and their 2015 target date.

• ADEPT:

Adept’s strategy is meshing proven business processes with new tech to form commercially ready solutions and involves (1) acquisitions to supplement and acquire capabilities it feels it needs for the future, and (2) aggressively marketing into new markets in food processing and materials handling.


One acquisition enabled Adept to add mobility to its line of products; another supplemented Adept’s food processing technology arsenal and offered a European base as well. Through it’s 2010 acquisition of MobileRobots, Adept now provides a mobile platform for a variety of purposes. One purpose is as a gofor in a hospital. They’ve teamed with Swisslog to ferry medicine from the dispensary to nurses stations and back again thereby enabling nurses to focus on patient care instead of getting things.

• BOSCH:

• HEARTLAND ROBOTICS AND OTHER START-UPS:

• FOXCONN:

Foxconn assembly workers. Photo: Bobby Yip/Reuters/File

China’s economic miracle has lifted countless millions of supremely poor people out of poverty. But this progress has come at a price. The Apple Corporation’s experience in manufacturing its popular iPhones, iPods and iPads in China – recently described in the N.Y. Times – has subjected many of those making Apple products to unsafe and unfair working conditions.

Apple has been good for China. It has provided hundreds of thousands of jobs for the 300 to 400 million Chinese anxious to leave their rural, impoverished existence and move to a city where they can get a paying job. When these migrant workers get that job they send home 30-50% of their earnings, and then they and their families back home buy, amongst other things, electronic consumer products like cellphones, smartphones and iPods.

Many of these jobs have been created by the Apple phenomenon whereby Apple keeps making trend-setting products through new and novel uses of technological achievement.People want to buy their iPhones and iPads. Apple just had it’s biggest ever quarter: 37M iPhones, 15M iPads, $46 billionrevenue. Plus, as the economy has started to improve, people have more disposable income and are willing to spend even more for Apple products – 60% of which are manufactured and assembled in China, much of that by one large contract manufacturer: Foxconn.

Foxconn – whose parent company is Hon Hai Precision Electronics, a publicly traded Taiwanese company (TPE:2317) – is the hub in the center of this wheel of motion. It is in their factories in China where some of the components are built and much of the final assembly takes place. As recently reported by the New York Times, CBS, NPR, various watchdog groups and even an off-Broadway play, these factories are havens for worker mistreatment, suicides, unsafe conditions, low pay, and even child labor.

Suicides reached a peak in 2010 and Foxconn implemented solutions, including protective barriers, hotlines and counseling to help prevent further incidents. No suicides were reported in 2011.

Unsafe factory conditions, particularly working with toxins (polishing resins and cleaners) and dusts from metal shavings and other materials were cited as another example. Two serious explosions involving improperly ventilated aluminum shavings occurred in 2011 killing 20 and injuring 50. Subsequently, better ventilation systems and the replacement of workers with robotic polishing, sanding and spraying machines is beginning to take place.

Pay has raced to keep up with discontent and has risen from $0.25 per hour to $0.50 and then $1.00 and now, in many cases, $2.00 per hour. But in this excerpt from a report by a labor rights group, China Labor Watch, one can see the underlying problems:

The minimum wage in many factories does not meet the living costs of its workers. Workers cannot earn a living wage from normal working hours alone, and must work excessive overtime hours in order to earn enough money to survive. At one factory [not Foxconn] for example, workers’ minimum monthly wage was $138 in October 2010. There was a $6 deduction for dormitory accommodations, a $40.50 deduction for food and utilities fees, and a $15.30 deduction for social insurance, which left $76.20. If workers have other expenses or financial responsibilities, such as vocational classes or financial support of their parents (one of the main reasons migrant workers seek work in cities), it would be impossible to meet their living costs with only $76.20. In this situation, workers find themselves with no other option but to work excessive overtime.

 

Furthermore, many factories require workers to complete a fixed term of employment before they become eligible for a salary increase. Some factories required workers to complete at least a three month probation period and an additional three month evaluation before becoming eligible for a salary increase. Other factories require a year or longer before workers are eligible for an annual bonus. The difficulty, lengthy terms, and sometimes unpredictability involved in gaining a salary increase and bonus further reinforces workers’ dependence on overtime in order to earn a living wage.

Interviews by the press and various workers rights groups indicate that the main form of discontentis pressure and punishment from long hours at monotonous but intricate work in less than ergonomically friendly postures. 60-72 hour  6-day work weeks are the norm. The pressure comes from the demands to produce more, work more and complain less with punishment for infringements meted out in the form of financial fines, push-ups, public humiliation and attitudinal retraining classes.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was outraged at the N.Y. Times. Two recent stories in the N.Y. Times were followed by pieces on NPR and CBS: (1) In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad and (2) How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work. He considered the articles to be an offensive pseudo exposé. In an internal e-mail message to select Apple employes, Cook wrote:

We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It’s not who we are.

 

For the many hundreds of you who are based at our suppliers’ manufacturing sites around the world, or spend long stretches working there away from your families, I know you are as outraged by this as I am.

Foxconn, like many of the other suppliers, has denied many of the accusations and responded to periodic audits by saying that they’ve made or are implementing the legal changes suggested.

To be fair, one must keep in mind that China’s internal labor laws are newly emerging and are different from ours – their minimum age and wage are different too. Their management style is significantly different as well.

The N.Y Times articles failed to note what may be Foxconn’s most important long-term remedy to problems with its workforce: its plans to deploy one million robots. Foxconn appears to actually be ahead of the news cycle in this instance. Early in 2010 they realized that there would be increased demand for their products and services – particularly Apple products – and that they just couldn’t handle more workers. Instead, they decided to deploy 1 million robots as part of their solution. Mid-2011 they launched an R&D facility and robot manufacturing factory in Taiwan to design, develop and produce those 1 million factory robots. Recently they confirmed their intentions to replace but not necessarily lay off 500,000 workers with those 1 million robots thereby moving those workers up the skill-level ladder to more experienced and higher paying jobs.

By any reasonable definition of product liability law, Apple products are Apple’s products regardless of whether Apple subcontracts some or much of the effort. Apple is liable for any product failures that injure buyers. Consequently Apple is responsible for the actions of their suppliers to the extent that they are working on Apple’s products. Thus it comes down to this: what can and should Apple and other companies do when their sub-contractors are not holding to acceptable Western standards?

Here are my two suggestions:

1. Apple could insist that dull, dirty and dangerous tasks be automated with robotics and other processes that eliminate these jobs and, more importantly, reduce the areas where injury and discontent are likely to occur.
2. The N.Y. Times articles implied that Apple monitors its contractors’ costs and squeezes their profit margins to the lowest level possible and, when that happens, it becomes a major factor in these contractors subjecting their employees to unsafe and unfair working conditions in order to meet Apple’s price. If, on the other hand, Apple provided additional profits to their suppliers but stipulated that those profits be passed down to their workers in the form of additional funds for safety, better work-hours, automation and higher pay, everyone would benefit and the Apple culture would be preserved. Some might argue that this solution doesn’t address the competitive pressures of the marketplace. Apple’s recent quarterly 28% net profit results – and their $92 billion cash hoard – suggest that, regardless of market pressures, Apple does have some ability to share their profits where they will do the most good for long-term growth, the welfare of their sub-contract workers, shareholder value, AND global public relations.

China’s economic miracle has lifted countless millions of supremely poor people out of poverty. But this progress has come at a price. The Apple Corporation’s experience in manufacturing its popular iPhones, iPods and iPads in China – recently described in the N.Y. Times – has subjected many of those making Apple products to unsafe and unfair working conditions.

Apple has been good for China. It has provided hundreds of thousands of jobs for the 300 to 400 million Chinese anxious to leave their rural, impoverished existence and move to a city where they can get a paying job. When these migrant workers get that job they send home 30-50% of their earnings, and then they and their families back home buy, amongst other things, electronic consumer products like cellphones, smartphones and iPods.

Many of these jobs have been created by the Apple phenomenon whereby Apple keeps making trend-setting products through new and novel uses of technological achievement.

People want to buy their iPhones and iPads. Apple just had it’s biggest ever quarter: 37M iPhones, 15M iPads, $46 billion revenue. Plus, as the economy has started to improve, people have more disposable income and are willing to spend even more for Apple products – 60% of which are manufactured and assembled in China, much of that by one large contract manufacturer: Foxconn.

Foxconn – whose parent company is Hon Hai Precision Electronics, a publicly traded Taiwanese company (TPE:2317) – is the hub in the center of this wheel of motion. It is in their factories in China where some of the components are built and much of the final assembly takes place. As recently reported by the New York Times, CBS, NPR, various watchdog groups and even an off-Broadway play, these factories are havens for worker mistreatment, suicides, unsafe conditions, low pay, and even child labor.

Suicides reached a peak in 2010 and Foxconn implemented solutions, including protective barriers, hotlines and counseling to help prevent further incidents. No suicides were reported in 2011.

Unsafe factory conditions, particularly working with toxins (polishing resins and cleaners) and dusts from metal shavings and other materials were cited as another example. Two serious explosions involving improperly ventilated aluminum shavings occurred in 2011 killing 20 and injuring 50. Subsequently, better ventilation systems and the replacement of workers with robotic polishing, sanding and spraying machines is beginning to take place.

Pay has raced to keep up with discontent and has risen from $0.25 per hour to $0.50 and then $1.00 and now, in many cases, $2.00 per hour. But in this excerpt from a report by a labor rights group, China Labor Watch, one can see the underlying problems:

The minimum wage in many factories does not meet the living costs of its workers. Workers cannot earn a living wage from normal working hours alone, and must work excessive overtime hours in order to earn enough money to survive. At one factory [not Foxconn] for example, workers’ minimum monthly wage was $138 in October 2010. There was a $6 deduction for dormitory accommodations, a $40.50 deduction for food and utilities fees, and a $15.30 deduction for social insurance, which left $76.20. If workers have other expenses or financial responsibilities, such as vocational classes or financial support of their parents (one of the main reasons migrant workers seek work in cities), it would be impossible to meet their living costs with only $76.20. In this situation, workers find themselves with no other option but to work excessive overtime. 

Furthermore, many factories require workers to complete a fixed term of employment before they become eligible for a salary increase. Some factories required workers to complete at least a three month probation period and an additional three month evaluation before becoming eligible for a salary increase. Other factories require a year or longer before workers are eligible for an annual bonus. The difficulty, lengthy terms, and sometimes unpredictability involved in gaining a salary increase and bonus further reinforces workers’ dependence on overtime in order to earn a living wage.

Interviews by the press and various workers rights groups indicate that the main form of discontent is pressure and punishment from long hours at monotonous but intricate work in less than ergonomically friendly postures. 60-72 hour  6-day work weeks are the norm. The pressure comes from the demands to produce more, work more and complain less with punishment for infringements meted out in the form of financial fines, push-ups, public humiliation and attitudinal retraining classes.

Imagine being present at the birth of a new industry. It is an industry based on groundbreaking new technologies, wherein a handful of well-established corporations sell highly specialized devices for business use, and a fast-growing number of start-up companies produce innovative toys, gadgets for hobbyists and other interesting niche products. But it is also a highly fragmented industry with few common standards or platforms. Projects are complex, progress is slow, and practical applications are relatively rare. In fact, for all the excitement and promise, no one can say with any certainty when — or even if — this industry will achieve critical mass. If it does, though, it may well change the world.

Bill Gates, Scientific American Reports

2008 Special Edition on Robotics

• Industrial robotics — wherein a handful of well-established corporations sell highly specialized devices for business use. KUKA, FANUC, ABB  and Yaskawa Motoman are amongst the mostly European and Japanese vendors providing handling, welding, cleanroom and assembling robots to the automobile, electronics and a few other industries. [According to the International Federation of Robotics in their annual World Industrial Robotics 2011 report, 118,337 robot units were sold in 2010 bringing the worldwide count of industrial robots in place and working to 1,035,000.]
• Service robotics — faster-growing, with start-up companies and research labs producing innovative toys, gadgets for hobbyists and niche products for healthcare, dairy and agriculture, home and yard, space, defense, security and surveillance, and scientific research. [According to the International Federation of Robotics in their annual World Service Robotics 2011 report, 2,203,241 total service-sector robots were sold in 2010 composed of 13,741 field or high-end service robot units (of which 45% were for defense applications), about 1.4 million vacuum and floor cleaners, 36,500 lawn-mowing robots and 753,000 entertainment robots.]

The diversity of the arguments are, to some extent, merited based on the unique needs of the various end users:

• Industrial, commercial, healthcare and defense users do need security, reliability and efficiency and robot vendors have a vested interest in protecting their value-added software and hardware solutions.
• Academics and emerging businesses need openness and sharing so that re-invention isn’t so prevalent as it has been in the past, and a full range of features and simulation capabilities are available so that far-ranging teams can collaborate on research projects using the same software.

Industrial robot control systems are complex in part because of the need to integrate the robot into the end user’s manufacturing system, partly because of the many algorithms which need to be processed to make the robot and all of its moving parts work, and because, up until recently, it was necessary to distribute the computing workload of the various activities of the robot, but also because control systems haven’t kept up with the availability of faster and more capable CPUs, connectors and communication methods. All of these are reasons leading to robot manufacturers becoming more OEM-like as most of them aren’t too capable in developing engineering solutions for new applications (thus their dependence on system integrators).

Service robotics, on the other hand, are more mobile and self-contained, carrying with them (or communicating via wifi) their control system functions. They tend to be either mobile or portable and either loosely connected to the end-user’s internal system or operate either autonomously or by modified remote control. Consequently, software like ROS brings lots of new capabilities which the original robot manufacturers are not able to do. Service robotic providers and research labs and facilities see the value and enjoy the benefits of shared open source development – they see it as good and useful for the overall robotics community — yet most of the start-up companies lock down their finished products so that end users are assured that their products are safe, secure and reliable and the resulting software is reduced to enable the product to fully function but not be overloaded with unused functionality.

• Commoditization of hardware, hardware modules, and software.
• Markus Waibel, senior researcher at Zurich’s ETH IDSC and participant in the EU’s RoboEarth library-sharing project, feels that there is a good chance that we will see a split into companies specializing in robotics software vs. robotics hardware in the near future. This is evidenced by the current trend toward modularization and commoditization of robotic hardware. This happened in the early PC industry and there are obvious benefits. “Actually, I would go a step further and argue that this split has already happened in robotics research, with most research platforms at least supporting [Willow Garage’s] ROS,” said Waibel.
• Tom Wagner, CTO of iRobot, says: “Open interfaces; not open source. That way 3rd party equipment and payloads can work harmoniously with iRobot and other robot manufacturer’s products while still providing a safe, secure and reliable product to the end user.”
• Many needed solutions have already been solved yet are re-invented regularly within academia, partly because of cost, partly to aid in the learning process and sometimes out of just plain whimsy.
• Forums for bringing together scientists, engineers, users and executives, such as the recent RoboBusiness 2011 event in Boston, attempt to thwart reinvention by being small and personal so that people have the time to explain their problems and explore various solutions. At that Boston forum, by having the time to meet and explore, one Boston agricultural startup was able to solve a vexing navigation problem by purchasing a solution module from another startup that had already solved that exact problem.
• Industrial robot manufacturers are beginning to shift into the service sector. At a recent conference in San Francisco, KUKA, a large industrial robot manufacturer, announced that they were proceeding along a path outlined in an internal roadmap to enter the service robotics business. Although no other industrial vendor has indicated similar intentions, the progression to enlarge their businesses by adapting their robots and robotic solutions into the service sector appears to be inevitable.
• Key points in KUKA’s roadmap are enabling mobility with SLAM navigation, making their robots lighter in weight, sensitive to their surroundings so that they are safe for nearby workers, and providing motion simulator trainability for future applications.
• Bosch also has a roadmap for developing robotic consumer devices that work within Bosch’s existing product family. Cost, safety and convenience are their primary concerns. A laundry app is a perfect matchup of technology and Bosch’s product line thus, at IROS, they were all over the Berkeley team that trained a PR2 robot to fold laundry.
• SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) are seen as a major near-term market for robot expansion. This market needs easily trainable low-cost co-robots that are flexible and safe enough to handle multiple small-volume tasks alongside humans. This is the bread and butter application for SMEs. Incidentally, this is another example of robot manufacturers becoming commodity robot and module providers – in this case providing a large quantity of low-cost co-robots and letting the SME’s provide their own customization and integration.
• Big consumer product companies such as Toyota, Samsung and others, have announced their intentions to enter the medical robotics and consumer healthcare marketplace in 2013 and 2014. This may have as much positive impact on the service robotics sector as Foxconn is having in the industrial market (see below).
• Foxconn entering the robotics manufacturing business with their own manufacturing and assembly factories as clients.
• They’ve announced a planned deployment of 1 million robots within 3-4 years.
• Little is known of the details of the types, quantities or activities of the robots nor of the 500,000 human laborers that will be displaced.
• The Cloud is being introduced into robotics as it is in other areas of business – a way to offload processing and data to a place better equipped to handle the high number of CPU cycles needed to process vision, recognition, communication and navigation, most often simultaneously.

It is into this fray — this two-world ascendant industry of promise, fragmentation and complexity – that the question of whether a universal robotic control system is needed or not has been asked and not clearly answered.

There appears to be an obvious and logical answer:

• Robot manufacturers will soon enable open-source systems such as Willow Garage’s ROS to connect and front-end their proprietary internal operating system. Yaskawa Motoman has already done this.
• They will also enable an as-yet undeveloped universal interface so that using specialized devices and modules from various 3rd party vendors can occur.
• There won’t be a commercial version of ROS nor a universal robotic operating system.
• There will, however, within academia and the emerging service robotics sector, be a greater dependence and use of ROS because, as Markus Waibel says, “There are obvious economies of scale benefits – just have a look at the ROS contributors list and it is very clear that even now no single robotics manufacturer can match this brainpower.”

Foxconn, a big contractor for Apple and others, breaks ground for robot facilities. It plans to replace 500,000 workers with 1 million robots.

Workers are seen inside a Foxconn factory in the township of Longhua in China’s southern Guangdong Province in this 2010 photo. After a spate of employee deaths and complaints about working conditions, electronics manufacturer Foxconn has broken ground on new robot facilities. Within five years, it says it plans to replace 500,000 workers with 1 million robots. Photo: (Bobby Yip/Reuters/File)

But earlier this month, officials from Hon Hai Precision Industry and its subsidiary, Foxconn, took the next step, signaling a potential sea change in the electronics industry. They broke ground for new robotics R&D and manufacturing facilities in a new industrial park in Taichung, central Taiwan. Foxconn, which made its name by using cheap mainland Chinese labor to supply the likes of Apple, HP, Sony, Dell and Nokia, says it will replace 500,000 workers with robots in the next three to five years.

The plan is so sweeping that its implementation would have huge implications for China and the robotics industry worldwide. It signals that Chinese labor may no longer have the low-cost advantage it once enjoyed and that the robotics industry is ripe for change.

Start with China. Most of Foxconn’s 1.2 million employees work there. So an automation plan that would replace nearly half the company’s workforce suggests that the cost of those workers is rising. In a press release, the company said mass producing assembly-line type robots was part of its plan to cope with labor shortages and rising wages.

Foxconn has special reasons for speeding up factory automation. During the past 15 months, at least 14 Foxconn workers have died in apparent suicides, most of them in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, where harsh working conditions were said to exist. The company received so much negative publicity and scrutiny from labor groups and clients, Apple in particular, that it began a two-pronged effort to reduce labor costs.

Foxconn has been relocating factories closer to its source of employees, inland China and central Brazil, and is moving ahead with its robot development. The company expects its new robot R&D and manufacturing facilities to create 2,000 jobs in Taiwan. The new robots which will be deployed in China, will allow Foxconn to move displaced workers up the skill ladder to better paying and more interesting jobs. How many workers are kept on is anybody’s guess. But with sufficient growth, Foxconn has an incentive to redeploy most of them, which would avoid having to hire, train, and house additional workers as production needs increase.

Foxconn’s move also represents a wakeup call to ABB, KUKA, and Fanuc – the world’s largest robot manufacturers currently. Its plan to develop robots on its own implies that the current lines of industrial robots are not flexible and easily trainable enough for the likes of Foxconn.

Foxconn’s move into the robotics business reflects how things are changing in the industry. The days when industrial robots had a small library of moves but precisely and reliably repeated those moves 24/7 are no longer. New tech is more personalized and manufacturing is following with small quantities of thousands of variants of base products. Robots have to keep up with those changes. At present they have not.

Foxconn’s plans are hugely ambitious, nevertheless. According to the latest statistics from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), there were 52,290 industrial robots in China of which approximately 10,000 were in Foxconn factories. Thus, the company is aiming to go from 10,000 to 1 million robots in three to five years.

That would nearly equal the number of industrial robots currently deployed worldwide –1,035,016, according to the IFR.

Some analysts remain skeptical that Foxconn really intends to build robots. It will concentrate on automation machinery instead, they say. But two sources – both claiming not to be able to provide details because of nondisclosure agreements – say the opposite: Foxconn is planning on entering the robot manufacturing business with a variety of flexible, easily trainable, and low-cost assembly-line robots.

China is the fastest-growing market for the use of industrial robotics, IFR says. It forecasts that industrial robotics applications in China will increase by 64 percent next year.

Swedish power and automation technology company ABB Group recently built a robot manufacturing facility in China, supplementing numerous sales and integration offices.

The stock of Foxconn’s parent company, Hon Hai, has fallen about 22 percent so far this year, but margins are improving as plant relocations are completed. One Barclay’s financial analyst says the next 12 months look much better. Factory relocation costs have still taken a toll on Hon Hai’s bottom line profitability, though analysts say the expansion could pay off in the long-run, thanks to the lower wages that Hon Hai will be able to pay in these less affluent regions.

This posting first appeared in The New Economy, November 17, 2011, The Christian Science Monitor and is copied and cross-linked with permission.

Pure science is an integral part of robotics and often leads to solutions for strategic needs for an audience of willing buyers. Here are a few examples of that process from companies with products scheduled to hit the marketplace in the next four years.
Harvest Automation

• Servicing ornamental horticulture market ($35 billion industry)
• Focused on nurseries and greenhouses and their continual need to move potted plants
• Each robot to produce 10,000 hours of production and do the work of one laborer
• Will be in field beta testing in 2012; full rollout of commercial product in 2013
• This year’s field testing quite successful
• More than 10 prospective nursery clients signed on to be test sites and contributed to the development process
• Fully venture funded until 2015 projected profitability

Foxconn – throwing all the other numbers out of whack

• Building $223 million R & D and manufacturing facility to produce assembly-line robots
• Plans to go from 10M present number of robots to 300M by end of 2013 to 1MM by end of 2015
• Mammoth rollout in Western terms; but not for Asian factories
• Hiring 2,000 Taiwanese engineers and scientists to make it happen
• Foxconn has had problems managing all their employees (1.2 MM)
• Replacing 1 million dull, dirty and dangerous tasks in their own factories with robots will eliminate 500M positions; Foxconn says they are planning to move up those 500M rather than lay them off; also saves necessity to hire 500M more workers
• Robots will likely be low-level polishers, painters, welders and transporters with intricate assemblies still done by human hands

Sea Robotics

• Office of Naval Research sponsored research to develop robotic underwater device to clean ship hulls
• Science is to mimic the behavior of sea creatures
• $1 billion in excess fuel and cleaning attributable to biofouling – barnacles and biofilm adhering to ships hulls
• Hull Bug, Sea Robotics new robot, is a fully autonomous submersible that figures out how to efficiently traverse a complicated three dimensional environment consisting of the contours of a ship
• Sensors determine clean or not clean thus robot can determine the surfaces it has yet to sweep
• Other sensors inspect for barnacles and they are removed differently
• Cool and descriptive video and an in-depth report on the details of the project
• Currently being tested with deployment in 2015 across the US Navy’s fleet

These three examples are just the tip of an iceberg of near-term robot deployments. Other announcements include hoped-for companies like Heartland Robotics and the commercialization of DARPA science projects such as the ARM Project which is slated to complete in 2014, to niche robot markets like the one to maintain and inspect high voltage transmission lines from the Electric Power Research Institute due to be deployed in 2014.

Heartland Robotics’ project is a big hope for American-based robotics businesses if and when it produces a factory assistant robot – a co-robot – for small and medium-sized enterprises.  Similar to Harvest Automation – Heartland has enlisted manufacturer partners to help them help each other. No field trials yet nor planned dates given.

DARPA’s ARM Project is developing software and hardware that enables a robot to autonomously manipulate, grasp, and perform complicated tasks, with humans providing only high-level supervision. The ARM robot will be able to adapt to unstructured, dynamic environments. Imagine a two-armed security robot unzipping or unsnapping personal luggage and then rifling through searching for illegal objects and then closing it back up again.

All of this activity is online and heading for a bright robotic future and I haven’t even mentioned the healthcare field where robotic assistants of all types are flourishing and in line at the FDA and European CE agencies awaiting approvals… but that’s another story next month.