For decades, the robot work alongside people. In the automotive industry, for example, they have long been the most expensive and reliable welders and painters. Sitting still and doing the same job over and over again has historically been a favorite part of automation.
But with its explosion artificial intelligence, robots are beginning to understand more complex, differentiated tasks. And they are becoming more and more capable of navigating, both inside and outside the space. In agriculture, robots not only plow the fields, but can now detect weeds and hit them with a laser. In hospitals, robots do everything from bringing supplies to nurses to helping surgeons steer their instruments more accurately.
A exhibition of the World Economic Forum for 2020 predicted that Robotics and automation will displace 85 million jobs worldwide over the next five years. However, he also provided that these technologies would create 97 million new jobs – general positions work requiring more skills and training.
Of course, this creates a lot of human stress. A poll of her Morning Consult of 2021 found that 48% of Americans fear that automation will reduce the number of jobs. This fear was greater among adults earning less than $ 50,000 a year and those without a college degree.
“People who have the skills, the education, can find work,” says Lionel P. Robert Jr., a professor at the Institute of Robotics at the University of Michigan. “People on the lower extremities – when these jobs disappear, they just have fewer options to find another job.”
As everyone knows, the supply chain is under tremendous pressure with the explosion of consumer spending. E-commerce exploded as pandemic padlocks began and continues to grow rapidly (14.2% increase from 2020 to 2021). Demand is accelerating the growth of advanced robots, and nowhere are the prospects for automation stronger than in two specific areas: storage and truck transport.
The automatic warehouse
“Moving pallets, moving forklifts, moving boxes to fulfillment centers – this is an area where we’ve just seen a huge robotic explosion,” said Matthew Johnson-Roberson, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Amazon is running its own in-house robotics company to advance the technology. And a growing group of start-ups, such as Berkshire Gray, Covariant, Dexterity and Plus One Robotics, offer automation services to the rest of the industry.
Take, for example, the “put wall” – a series of cases that employees run to fill with customer orders. Berkshire Gray now offers a robotic wall that automatically fills cases and carries completed orders for shipment. It can handle the same number of orders with only one third of the number of employees, as the company claims.
And as robots’ artificial intelligence becomes better at recognizing and handling a wider variety of packages, the role of humans will continue to shrink. “We have a robotic field where we have hundreds of robots actually working together. “There are no people at all,” said Sri Solur, Berkshire Gray’s chief product officer, who counts Walmart, Target and FedEx among its customers. People only enter the image when the system is stuck, such as when a conveyor belt is stuck.
But for now, as warehouse businesses continue to grow, the workload far exceeds what machines can handle. Despite automation, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects warehouse employment to increase by 7% from 2020 to 2030. And warehouses are raising wages and adding benefits to attract and retain employees for these grueling jobs. .
Robotic truckers
The goods have a long way to go to and from the warehouses and the work of the truckers is exhausting. One of the downsides of the job is the monotony of driving on the highway – but such tedious tasks are, again, the sweet spot for automation. Several well-funded companies, such as Aurora, Plus, TuSimple, and Google sister company Waymo, are testing automated driving systems.
Some companies have suggested that they first automate the highway section – which includes more than 90% of long-distance trucks – and use human drivers to handle the most difficult navigation around cities. But Aurora, which works with FedEx, Uber Freight and Werner, says it will be able to automate the entire trip by the end of 2023. “We think you really need to drive to be useful,” he said. Aurora consultant Chris Urmson (formerly head of Google’s automotive program). “And that means it has to start somewhere and end somewhere.”
Rachel Binder, senior information analyst at CB Insights, says the freeway section could soon be automated, but expects full autonomy to take another 5 to 10 years. And it takes a long time for technology to move from the possible to the ubiquitous. “The investment needed to build a robot fleet that will substantially change the dynamics of the job market is significant,” Johnson-Roberson said of automated truck transport.
If automation completely conquers the truck industry, it could eventually replace up to 400,000 jobsaccording study of Cornell University for 2020. But will people miss these jobs? Even today, it is difficult to find people to take over. In 2021, the United States had about 80,000 vacant driver seats, according to the American Truck Association.
Jobs will be lost… one day
Today, economic, demographic and cultural forces are coming together to boost demand for labor-saving robotics, while explosive artificial intelligence technology is making radically smarter machines possible. Fast Company. Robots always start with the most trivial tasks. But as technology evolves, even roles that require considerable human skill and judgment fall into this definition.
None of this is going to happen in the next year or two, however. The 5, 10 or more years it will take for robots to reach both skills and numbers offer time for the current and next generation of workers to learn more advanced skills beyond what machines can do.
And these skills could earn them more money, in more interesting jobs. Instead of people losing their jobs on machines, machines can simply replace professions that people no longer want to do anyway.
Source: News Beast
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