On Thu, 16 Jan 2014 18:58:11 +0100 Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote: > a good knife isn't produced by a computer controlled > machine, but handcrafted by a craftsman. But this isn't because a machine can't do the work of a good craftsman (in some cases today, and in almost any in the future). It's because it's hard to sell a knife for 250$ when one can buy a reasonably good one for 20$. Of course, there are some people who can value the 250$ knife but there are more who can't, or didn't have the money. And the people who can might not buy it when it was made by a machine. So if your company buys a very expensive robot to produce knifes, what quality will they produce? What machines can do nowadays is quite impressive: http://vimeo.com/3833961 (Kuka robot copies the Gutenberg Bible) Or think about machines in mills, sorting out single grains of poor quality while they are falling down like a waterfall into the millstone granting a better flour quality than you can with dozens of human workers doing the same. The downside of robots, yet, is that it takes a lot of time to make them learn to craft another series of knifes, even if they differs only in details. But there are already companies selling (industrial grade) robots you can program by showing them what they should do: http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/ No to mention the power such robots can have, combined with the accuracy shown in the vimeo video. The Kuka Titan can lift one metric ton placing it somewhere in over 3m range with an accuracy of millimeters: http://www.kuka-robotics.com/germany/en/pressevents/productnews/NN_titan_+the_worlds_strongest_robot.htm It's all a matter of costs, or better return of invest. Kuka robots for example get their paintjobs by humans. We all know robots can handle paintjobs very well, but Kuka has a very broad range of different robots and doesn't produce hundreds of each every day. So it's too expensive, yet, to (re)program the robot, but this is about to change. Bye.
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