

High Speed Robot Hand Dexterity [video] - dirtyaura
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR1lIOlg0CY

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function_seven
I watch a lot of How It's Made. On many episodes you'll see an assembly line
that is almost entirely automated, except for some small section. Sometimes
that section involves (A) precision work that we haven't yet figured out how
to automate. Most other times it seems to be (B) extremely "automatable" work
(e.g. grabbing widgets six at a time and putting them in a package) that
leaves me scratching my head as to why the robots aren't there as well.

I watch these episodes and think to myself that these workers are just the
last portion of the line to be replaced by robots, and it's only a matter of
time, capital, or both. Demos like this move the line between (A) and (B). The
Industrial Revolution was only a half-step--just the "brawn" part. Now we're
in the middle of the "brains" part, and the outcome is both exciting and
scary.

~~~
fauldsh
My presumption was it came down to money.

Machines have a lot higher initial one off costs. The repair costs of some
robots might make them more expensive per hour. Humans are tried and tested,
they don't break-down and stop your production line.

When designing the production lines they must weigh up the cost of a machine
at each stage (initial cost, elec, repairs) vs workers and decide a time-frame
they want to project and compare the costs over (because of their higher
initial cost the longer period you do your projection over the more likely a
robot will ever be cheaper).

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ChuckMcM
This is a fairly old video, I first saw it about 8 years ago. The interesting
thing for me was the motors. Modern pick and place robots (surface mount
circuit assembly) operate at speeds that make them invisible to the unaided
viewer, and they are manipulating parts that are the mass of rice grains or
smaller as well, with precision placement.

I kept hoping they would do a follow up which went beyond holding and went to
multi-arm manipulation.

~~~
bigbugbag
I came to comment to point that this demonstration is from may 2009 at ICRA[1]
which is getting old by now (though not enough that you had seen it 8 years
ago). It's the work of a research lab of university of tokyo called the sensor
fusion project[2] and more videos of their work are available on the official
page [3].

[1]
[https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/scripts/abstract.pl?Co...](https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/scripts/abstract.pl?ConfID=18&Number=1645)
[2]
[http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/fusion/index-e.html](http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/fusion/index-e.html)
[3]
[http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/movies/fusion_movies-e.html](http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/movies/fusion_movies-e.html)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Well I was doing mental math, a coworker at Google forwarded it to me while I
was there, and I didn't think I had been there all that long ('06 - '10) so
guessing mid-tenure at '08 and subtracting off that from '14 should have given
6 years but given [1] above I'm sure it was after the conference in '09\. (Now
added to my Evernote database so I won't make that mistake again :-)

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rasz_pl
That dribbling and re-grasping? oh man. Ugly bags of mostly water should be
very afraid of the future. Meatbags are able to achieve similar level of
skill, but not repeatability and endurance, not to mention the scale. Think
about any Jackie Chan movie. We have one Jackie, and it takes him >20 takes to
get some things right, but in the future we can have an army of robot Jackie
Chans getting every single movement right at the first try.

Forget Bigdog or Atlas, turns out future will be exactly like AMEE from Red
Planet.

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melling
FoxConn is trying to get robots to make iPhones. They are close but the
precision isn't quite there. Will millions of workers be replaced in the next
decade?

[http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/195556-foxconns-
robot...](http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/195556-foxconns-robotic-
workforce-isnt-precise-enough-to-assemble-iphones)

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cranklin
[https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=982690585087334](https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=982690585087334)

~~~
jops
My first HN LOL thanks!

