This level of automation in fabrication is pretty common now; it used to be that all the spot-welding you saw there was done by humans. Robots are a lot more consistent. Of course, the upfront cost is higher than hiring a burly dude and giving him a spot welder to wield for an eight hour shift…
>is this level of robot automation expected of modern manufacturing companies nowadays?
"FANUC, a Japanese robotics company, has been operating as a lights-out factory since 2001. Robots are building other robots at a rate of about 50 per 24-hour shift and can run unsupervised for as long as 30 days at a time. "Not only is it lights-out," says Fanuc vice president Gary Zywiol, "we turn off the air conditioning and heat too."
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 14.1 ms ] threadIs this super impressive? (to me it was)
Or is this level of robot automation expected of modern manufacturing companies nowadays?
Or was this clever cherrypicked marketing footage and it's all alpha 0.1 currently?
"FANUC, a Japanese robotics company, has been operating as a lights-out factory since 2001. Robots are building other robots at a rate of about 50 per 24-hour shift and can run unsupervised for as long as 30 days at a time. "Not only is it lights-out," says Fanuc vice president Gary Zywiol, "we turn off the air conditioning and heat too."
...See also: self-replicating machine"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_%28manufacturing%29