‘Robot is clearly a boon to solve corporal stress of production workers’
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
Are robots a boon or a threat to human beings, especially when it comes to jobs?
Robots should be considered as a boon to solve ergonomics issues as handling or rough tasks with human safety impact as welding (arc, laser, and so on). Some non-value added tasks could be replaced by such technology but beware of the effects of robotisation with a job clearance objective. By refocusing the operators on a limited task, you could face psychological issues by giving them a repeating narrowed work from the older production way. This could be considered as a possible side effect of robotics if a complete design of the new workshop is not achieved around the workers’ core value added. To sum up, it is a boon, but beware of robotisation as a main goal of costs reduction.
Is the robots-taking-jobs argument exaggerated, as there are still jobs waiting to be filled?
Everyone that experienced a mass production work by handling heavy tools during hours, days, weeks or years is aware what workers are suffering from. Muscular troubles, stress and pains are common in such jobs. And the undertrained brains are leading to a pure mechanical execution of the tasks that is not a right way to produce without quality issues. Robotics must be considered as a large point of view, giving to the worker the possibility to enhance his daily tasks. Industry 4.0 is providing workers the opportunity to have better jobs, leading to more competitive and therefore much more job opportunities. So I feel the argument is far-fetched.
While robots are adapting fast to new roles, are their human counterparts slow in doing so?
Robots are adapting fast to their new roles, but only in case of giving them the right senses to do it well. Currently, robots’ core technologies are clearly mature, but we are still waiting for the maturity of their senses; touch technologies are really efficient but not easy to generalise in every processes. Vision technologies are adapted to repetitive processes with a strong repeatability. In case of high variability of the parts or environment, vision technology is clearly insufficient and giving to human the possibility to adapting them better. But for how long? AI algorithms could reshuffle the cards.
Compared to the advanced economies, robot penetration in India is still low. Will there be a dramatic change in the near future
Main focus of Industry 4.0 compared to 3rd Industrial Revolution is going from mass production to a custom production. All industrialised countries will face this new reality, from the ones with a poor robot penetration as India (and France) to the others with high amount of robots as Korea, Japan and Germany. Each of them has to adapt their production facilities to have more flexibility, and two ways are leading to it: automatic flexible processes by software (previous answer) or human-robot processes by a job sharing between the robot and the worker, by dealing with each other main advantages. India (and France also) has the opportunity to go back to the race of advanced economies by leading the way of human-robot processes.
Finally, will man and robot co-exist in harmony?
Of course yes, robot is clearly a boon to solve corporal stress of the production workers and raise up the enablement of these people to do their job better. This coexistence should be not slow down by matter of safety; human-robot collaboration technologies are proven to warranty the safety of the cells and integrators are now aware about the safety topic. It should not slow down by matter of skills – HMI and programming of robots is now getting smart and with handheld devices, just as we are using our smartphones. It’s a matter of how to rethink the processes to give each other the right place.
Passionate from childhood of new technologies and automation systems, Alexandre Hecquet has 13 years’ experience in automotive industry. Initially worked at various Renault factories in France, right from shifts in both machining and assembly lines, Alexandre rose to the job of Robotics Referent of the Renault group, having the opportunity to deal with new paradigms in robotics, from flexibility of architectures to human-robot collaboration processes during the early years. With this last experience, he mainly works regarding regulation interpretations and internal policies with perspective of safety features and commissioning of robots.