Written by Bryan Lutz, Editor at Dollarcollapse.com:
Congratulations. You’ve been promoted to Robot Babysitter.
No, really. That’s the job. You show up, you clock in, you watch a bipedal machine do your old job, and you make sure it doesn’t accidentally kill anyone. Benefits presumably included. Existential dread: extra.
Somewhere in Cheraw, South Carolina, this is someone’s Monday morning. A humanoid robot named Digit is stamping metal parts inside a plexiglass cage while a human being stands outside it, watching, presumably wondering how to explain this on a resume.
I’ll try:
“Previous role: supervised a robot.”
“Reason for leaving: the robot got cheaper.”
Because that’s the other thing. Right now Digit runs about $10 to $25 an hour. The company’s goal is $2 to $3. Your average factory worker starts at $20. So we’re not really talking about robots replacing humans so much as robots currently on a very aggressive internship, learning the ropes, before eventually doing the whole job for the price of a Starbucks.
The cage is temporary, by the way. By the end of the year, Digit should be able to detect human beings in its environment. Which, honestly, feels like the least reassuring sentence in recent memory.
Sleep tight.
Here’s the full story…
The Wall Street Journal reports:
When Humanoid Robots Come to a Small-Town Factory
CHERAW, S.C.—Inside an auto-parts factory, a most unusual worker toils away.
Stepping gingerly across the metal floor, it holds its four-fingered hands at chest level until it reaches its objective: a 25-pound basket of bearing components fresh from a stamping press.
The worker uncurls its claw-like fingers, daintily grips the basket by its edges and walks it over to a conveyor that will send it through an industrial washing machine. About a minute after it grabbed the first basket off a pallet, it returns to grab another.
So it goes for eight hours a day, basket after basket, pallet after pallet.
A year ago, a person did this job. Now it belongs to a humanoid robot called Digit that was built for grunt work. Its legs angle backward like an ostrich’s, increasing its stability and lifting power. Its LED eyes blink to signal to human co-workers where it is directing its attention.
Schaeffler, a global manufacturer that makes parts for cars and airplanes, said it plans to deploy more of the robots in the coming months.
“We’ve identified a whole host of use cases that we would like humanoid robots to do,” said Courtney Baines, an advanced production technology engineer at Schaeffler.
Factories have used stationary robots since the 1960s for tasks such as welding frames and attaching windshields. But advances in batteries, motors and artificial intelligence have spawned a new generation: general-purpose robots that can walk around a plant and perform multiple jobs.
Ani Kelkar, who leads the robotics sector at consulting firm McKinsey, said while fewer than 200 humanoids are working in the world’s factories today, up to 5 million could be in place by 2040. That could increase productivity and shift humans into new roles without slashing the manufacturing workforce, he said.
Digit, made by Oregon-based startup Agility, has a growing number of competitors, including humanoids made by Boston Dynamics, Apptronik, Figure and Tesla. Agility has tried to distinguish its model by eschewing social-media stunts such as back flips or boxing.
At Schaeffler, Digit labors alone inside a Plexiglas cage, moving baskets for four hours, recharging over lunch, then going again for another four hours. An Agility contractor is posted nearby to monitor the humanoid’s work, but the company said that supervision should end soon.
Digit has also worked in facilities belonging to Amazon and GXO, but in every setting, it must be separated from its flesh-and-blood colleagues. The robot can’t detect humans when they are nearby, something required by federal safety standards.
Agility said a new model coming at the end of the year will have that capability. Daniel Diez, the company’s chief business officer, said that means Digit will be able to work without barriers, allowing factories to deploy more robots.
Agility wouldn’t give Digit’s price tag, but over the life of a robot, the costs work out to $10 to $25 an hour, depending on whether a company buys or rents it. Damion Shelton, Agility’s co-founder, has said it could eventually fall to $2 or $3 an hour. Entry-level positions at Schaeffler’s Cheraw plant, which isn’t unionized, start at $20 an hour.
Schaeffler declined requests to interview current production workers, citing company policy. The factory employs 750 people.
Cheraw, a town of 5,000 about 75 miles southeast of Charlotte, N.C., has seen plenty of economic upheaval in recent decades. Locals blame the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement for the flight of the textile industry. Factories have closed, and the timber industry has struggled.
Like many manufacturers, Schaeffler can still have trouble finding workers; a large “Now Hiring” sign is mounted outside the factory. Plant manager Allen Bailey said the person who used to do Digit’s job was transferred to a higher-skilled inspection position that offers better career prospects.
“We’ve never had any type of, in this plant, workforce layoff related to automation,” he said.
Schaeffler, which is based in Germany and has 110,000 employees, is also testing humanoids in some of its European plants. It says hundreds will be working in its factories by 2030.
IG Metall, a German industrial union that has multiple seats on Schaeffler’s board, hasn’t objected to the technology. Detlef Gerst, who works in the union’s general policy and sociopolitical issues division, said he doesn’t see the robots as an imminent threat to jobs, particularly those involving assembly tasks.
“They are not easy to perform by a robot,” he said.
The appearance of humanoids in a South Carolina plant has unnerved some former Schaeffler workers and enthused others. Doug Thompson, a 74-year-old retiree who worked at the company for 14 years, is somewhere in the middle.
“Efficiency is the name of the game and it’s relentless,” he said. “It’s not going to stop.”
