![]()
Carnegie Mellon's Herbert said that as long as it is similar product being produced and the production doesn't change very often, the investment in automation is going to be the norm. But that is also soon going to be the past of robotics in the workplace and human workers' interaction with machines.
"There is lots of work today on flexible and adaptable systems," Herbert said. That evolving model is one in which robots work with workers, and it poses more interesting questions about the future of manufacturing than the low-hanging fruit of automation that has already overtaken industries like food manufacturing.
"As automation moves to more flexible production, more calibration with people becomes important," Herbert said.
The robotics professor said humans will be tasked to do what they do well — and what robots are not good at — which is making decisions.
More from Net/Net:Humans and robots on the factory floorA $41 trillion gambit that will transform our citiesThis is the first Adidas shoe made almost entirely by robots
"The key is the distribution of skills between man and machine. People always think of machines replacing man, but the right way to think about it is once we have more capabilities with machines, we can start thinking about rebalancing skills and having humans do what humans are good at," Herbert said. "The model won't be how many people do we need to do X, but what is the role of people in X and role of machine in X," he said. "And that's the more interesting question and, in the long term, the more provocative one."
Investments in automation being made by food manufacturers like CMC Food will continue to point the most obvious benefit of the first wave of automation: increasing productivity. "The old model is gain productivity by replacing people," Herbert said. But the second wave of automation, if successful, will increase the number of new skills human workers can offer.
"Most industries are looking at this model in one form or another," Herbert said. At the national level, it's a major thrust of what's being done in robotics, but the robotics professor said most of the work is still at the stage of research. "There's strong proof and momentum to make it happen, but in the short term, it still makes more sense to simply replace people," he said.
Vairma said the argument "we'll be creating the jobs of the future someday" is just more spin that can be filed among all the corporate sound bites designed to make "automation sound lovely."
