Ford now has some robot “dogs” that perform tasks at its transmission plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan. I hate them.
Let’s first examine a video, produced by Ford. It presents an employee treating this robot as if it were a sentient being, which it is not.
Now let’s examine a GIF. The creepy movement of these robots, produced by Boston Dynamics and leased to Ford, never ages despite the fact that Boston Dynamics robots have been around for years.
Here’s another robot with Fluffy, also bad.
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Ford says robots help scan the plant, which humans now do. Ford of course presents this an amazing technological achievement and says it could save you tens of thousands of dollars.
The robots, which Ford is testing at its Van Dyke transmission plant, are bright yellow and easily recognizable. Equipped with five cameras, the robots can travel up to 3 mph with a battery that lasts almost two hours and will be used to scan the floor of the plant and help engineers update the original computer-aided design used when we are preparing to restructure our plants
“We design and build the plant. After that, over the years, changes are made that are rarely documented, ”says Mark Goderis, Ford’s digital engineering manager. “By having robots scan our facilities, we can see what it really looks like now and build a new engineering model. That digital model is used when we need to restructure the plant to get new products. “
Without Fluffy, the update would be much more tedious.
“We used to use a tripod, and we walked around the facility stopping in different places, each time standing for five minutes waiting for the laser to be scanned,” Goderis recalls. “Scanning a plant can take two weeks. With Fluffy’s help, we can do it in half the time. “
The old form was also expensive: it cost almost $ 300,000 to scan a facility. If this pilot works, Ford’s manufacturing team could scan all of its plants for a fraction of the cost. These cutting-edge technologies help save the business money and modernize facilities more quickly, ultimately helping to bring new vehicles to market sooner.
So much efficiency! Surely we will all have jobs once robots do all the work that humans do. Shoot these robots in the sun, please. Thank you!
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