Both humans and robots work in manufacturing plants however, they don’t usually work alongside one another. Robots are most often used in repetitive, exhausting or hazardous work, while people are needed for tasks that require finer skill and detail. An earlier post on this blog discussed some of the ways robots have started working alongside humans but there are of course some important issues to consider if we really want to make this kind of collaboration work.

Humans are individuals and we like to do things our own way. According to Julie Shah, an Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, robots need to display an almost seamless understanding of how they can help people. To give robots the ability to do this, Shah and her team at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new algorithm that allows a robot to quickly learn how people prefer to do particular tasks so that it can adapt accordingly to give them a hand.Shah stresses that without this ability, people are likely to get frustrated and forego any assistance from the robot which could potentially increase their efficiency on the task.

Watch the video above to see how the algorithm works in a test case involving spar assembly, a specific part of airplane manufacturing. The algorithm is also being used  in simulations to train robots and humans to work together; findings will be presented at the Robotics: Science and Systems Conference in Sydney, Australia this July.

Instead of stealing our jobs, robots might keep them around and even make them easier 

Robots are becoming more intelligent at the same time as they’re becoming more affordable. An article in The Economist discusses the need for executives of large companies to start considering the management of robots and other non-human resources.

With a struggling global economy, job availability is an overwhelmingly serious concern world-wide.
A 2009 article in The Atlantic points out that contrary to the European industrial revolution, where an artisan class was transformed into a low-skill yet highly productive class, today’s low-skilled labor employees are now being replaced by machines.

However, the recent article in The Economist suggests that robots could play a big part of a a management revolution “making robots behave like humans rather than the 20th century’s preferred option, making humans behave like robots”. The article goes on to suggest that in the developed world, robots can actually help preserve jobs. The article even attributes some of Germany’s resilience to the difficult economic situation to its abundant use of robots. Compared to Britain (which has suffered a significant loss of jobs), Germany has 5 times as many robots for every 10 000 workers. Although the car industry has suffered greatly worldwide, Audi has been successful in introducing industrial robots alongside its workers.

While it seems that the increased use of robots could pave a way for new types of jobs such as the creation, maintenance and deployment of these machines, it’s critical that industry leaders prepare for these changes in ways that will benefit society: for example by considering how lower production costs could have a positive effect on employee wages.