WEBVTT - Rerun: The Robots Are Coming for Your Job! 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.520 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:16.400 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:19.279 I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:22.720 are you? Here in the United States, we are celebrating 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.480 Labor Day, a federal holiday here in the States. Also 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.520 one that I find really interesting because it's all about 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:33.960 celebrating the American labor movement. But if you pay attention, 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.040 especially in the tech space, there are a lot of 0:00:37.200 --> 0:00:41.000 entities out there, a lot of companies that are eagerly 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:45.159 opposing the labor movement and trying to do things like 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:51.560 prevent workers from organizing and forming unions. Yeah, a complicated 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:53.600 thing that we have a holiday to celebrate it, and 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:58.120 yet we have plenty of examples of companies and organizations 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:02.760 out there dedicated to venting more labor organization from happening. 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:06.280 But let's put aside all of that. I thought, since 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:09.360 we're on holiday today, I wanted to make sure that 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:13.240 you had an episode anyway. So we're going to actually 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:15.920 listen to an episode that came out a few years ago, 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:19.600 back in twenty twenty July thirteenth, twenty twenty. In fact, 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:23.760 it is titled The Robots Are Coming for Your Job, 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.400 and it's all about robots and automated systems and the 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:33.520 anxiety that exists around this idea of automation eliminating jobs, 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:37.520 which I think has only become even more of a 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:41.440 talking point in the wake of things like generative AI, 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:45.480 for example. So let's listen to this episode from twenty twenty, 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:48.320 the Robots Are Coming for Your Job, and I'll chat 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:53.080 with you again at the end. I read a lot 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:56.600 of tech news and sometimes that ends up inspiring me 0:01:56.760 --> 0:01:59.840 to do an episode of tech stuff. That happened to 0:01:59.920 --> 0:02:03.280 me recently when I read this headline off of the 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:10.440 website tech Spot. Sony factory assembles PS four in thirty seconds, 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:15.840 only four humans involved in the process. A PS four, 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:19.040 in case you're not aware, is a PlayStation four video 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:23.160 game consoles. So this factory can build a video game 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:27.359 console from parts in half a minute and only four 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:30.720 human beings touch the ding dang thing in the process. 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:34.079 Those four humans, by the way, are involved in the 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:37.560 beginning and the end of the process. Two of them 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:41.239 load motherboards onto the assembly line, and a motherboard is 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:44.880 the primary circuit board for a computer system, and the 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:47.320 other two human beings are at the end of the 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:50.720 assembly line, and their job is to package the completed consoles. 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:55.560 All the actual assembly work is done by robots. Now 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:58.840 you may be experiencing a couple of different responses to 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:02.360 this information. I know I did. One of those was 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:07.480 a wow, that's seriously impressive. The PS four, like many 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:11.160 computer systems, has a lot of components, many of which 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:14.760 attached to one another by wire or cable. So these 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:18.200 robots have to be able to take these flexible components 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:21.360 and to join them in their proper anchor points with 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:24.880 the appropriate amount of pressure and precision to make a 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.400 good connection. Now, if any of you out there have 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:31.040 ever built your own PC, you know that plugging cables 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.960 in can get a little tricky depending on the layout 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:37.040 of the motherboard and the various components. And if you're 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:40.080 someone like me, you're likely putting stuff together only to 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:42.720 realize that maybe you should have done some of that 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:46.000 before you mounted them in a computer case, because now 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:48.960 you just don't have the space to work in properly. 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.400 So it's pretty darn impressive that robots can do this 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:57.720 consistently and correctly at that level of speed. Another response 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:02.880 I had was kind of scary. I mean, typically you 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:06.200 would have dozens of people employed on the assembly line 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:09.120 to do this sort of work, but in this factory 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:13.000 it's been stripped down to thirty two robots and four 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:16.960 human beings. The article in textpot points out that twenty 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:21.880 six of those thirty two robots are just attaching flexible 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:26.080 components together inside the console. Now, I have no idea 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:30.160 how much these robots cost, but I wager that they 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:33.600 are expensive enough to equal the salary of a standard 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:38.240 human employee on the assembly line. However, you don't pay robots. 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:41.360 You do have to spend money to maintain and repair them, 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:45.120 but assuming whatever you're making is going to be around 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:48.760 for a little while, they'll pay for themselves because eventually 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:51.159 you'll get to a point where the salaries you'd be 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:54.320 paying for humans would be more than the purchase and 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:58.920 maintenance cost of the robots. And the increase in efficiency 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:03.280 means you can produce a whole lot more stuff in 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:06.080 a given amount of time than you would with a 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:10.640 human centric assembly line, so you'll have more product to 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:14.200 sell in a shorter amount of time. When you start 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:18.800 crunching numbers, you discover your robotic assembly line can make 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:21.960 more stuff at a lower cost over a given period 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:24.120 of time, like you know, over a couple of years, 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:27.440 than what you would accomplish with human beings on that 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:29.840 assembly line. So you don't have to worry about the 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:33.040 robots taking a vacation. They don't take sick time, they 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:35.240 don't even take the night off. They can work around 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:39.159 the clock. They don't need health insurance, though I would 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:41.839 guess that most companies ensure the heck out of these 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:44.560 things just in case one breaks down. But from a 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:47.400 financial point of view, they make sense if you're building 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:50.680 stuff at a large enough scale, stuff like video game 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:55.279 consoles for the PlayStation four. It's a no brainer because 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:59.000 that console has sold around one hundred and ten million 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:02.479 units so far. That's a number large enough that I 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.440 can't even imagine what it would look like if you 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:09.479 had all those consoles together in one place. So if 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.560 there's enough demand for you to sell one hundred and 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:16.479 ten million whatever it is you want to sell, you 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:19.720 need to have a way to make those as efficiently 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:23.359 as possible, and that will help maximize your profits. And 0:06:23.400 --> 0:06:26.640 the more efficient the process, the more competitively you can 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:29.760 price your product and still make a profit. But the 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:34.120 idea of robots performing jobs far more effectively, consistently, and 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:38.320 efficiently than humans raises a lot of questions. And these 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:42.400 are not new questions either, but they are questions like 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:47.120 if more factories rely on robots for production, particularly if 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:50.840 those robots can be programmed to produce new products once 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.080 older ones go obsolete, what happens to the job market, 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:57.200 What happens to the millions of people who work in 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:01.760 manufacturing on assembly lines? They go? What will this do 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.880 to economies around the world. Lots of people have tried 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:11.640 to answer these questions, sometimes giving drastically different answers. And 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:13.840 we're going to take a look at the history and 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:17.640 evolution of industrial robots in this episode and explore the 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:22.720 ramifications of automated manufacturing. And this is where I dive 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:26.000 into history. I've talked about the history of robots before, 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:30.600 so I'll try to restrict my focus to industrial robots. 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:33.760 And before I get into that, let's just address the 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:37.320 fact that the use of machinery to increase efficiency has 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:40.960 been a controversial subject since long before there ever was 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:45.440 such a thing as a robot. Generally speaking, machines are 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:48.960 meant to make work easier or in some cases make 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:53.000 the work possible just to begin with, they are labor 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:57.400 saving devices, requiring humans to put forth less effort to 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:01.280 get the same or better results. This applies to the 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:05.200 simplest of machines, I mean stuff like levers or pulleys 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:09.040 or an inclined plane, and it applies to very complex 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:14.080 machines as well. Before the Industrial Revolution, most stuff like 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:17.920 textiles was made by crafts people out of their own homes. 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:23.360 This was literally the cottage industry. Trades people would travel 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:27.720 and become the lifeline for the cottage industry, supplying raw materials, 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:31.600 buying finished products, and selling those products off at a 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:36.400 profit elsewhere. Many tradespeople built a good deal of wealth 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:39.200 working this way, and they had the means to look 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:45.360 at alternatives to this decentralized cottage industry approach. An idea 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:49.400 began to form. If you brought together crafts people to 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:54.160 a centralized location, and if you simplified the process of production, 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:58.320 you could make way more stuff, which in turn means 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.959 you could sell way more stuff, which in turn means 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:05.760 you can make way more money, and money makes the 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:10.880 world go round. This thought process helped fuel a similar 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.960 line of thinking. If you could design machines that could 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:17.800 do a lot of work that typically fell to skilled 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:21.439 crafts people. You wouldn't need the crafts people at all. 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:25.040 You could train anyone, even if that person had no 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:29.360 experience with the process, just to work the machine. And 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:32.040 while it might take years of dedication to go through 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:35.360 the process of being an apprentice to learn a trade 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:37.600 well enough so that you can actually make a living 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:41.120 at it, with a machine, you can skip right over that. 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:44.400 As long as the machine's end product was good enough. 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:48.400 It didn't have to be better than the stuff crafts 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.480 people were making. It just had to be good enough 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:55.600 and cheap enough and fast enough to produce. Then you 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:58.400 could sell the finished product at a lower cost than 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:01.360 what crafts people would charge because not as much time 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.439 and effort went into making the thing. Now, I guess 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:07.400 it's clunky to talk about this while using an example, 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:12.559 so let's go with a poster child for the Industrial Revolution, weaving. 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:16.600 The weaving trade is an ancient one, and it requires 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:19.640 a good deal of skill to do it well by hand. 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:24.119 In the late seventeen hundreds, a man named Edmund Cartwright 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:28.240 patented a loom powered by a water wheel. The loom's 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:31.120 operation was such that a person who had no training 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:35.400 in weaving could operate the machine and produce finished textiles. 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:39.839 Cartwright's design would be built upon by other inventors who 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:43.080 had turned to steam power and other means to operate 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:47.960 the power loom. Many cottage industry weavers found themselves out 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:51.200 of work. They could potentially opt to work in the 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:55.000 textile factories, as those were popping up all over the place, 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:59.760 particularly in England, but the wages were low. As you 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:04.680 can imagine, this didn't sit well with the weavers. There 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:10.640 were protests, including some that incorporated violence and destruction. Ultimately, 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:14.440 the factory process won out, and along with it some 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:19.560 really awful working conditions followed, including stuff like child labor 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:25.320 and ridiculously low wages and dangerous working conditions. This led 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:28.319 to more protests, including the type that would give us 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:32.439 the word sabotage. And let's get a quick side note 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:35.400 on that one, as it is the source of a 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:41.000 little mythology or misinformation. See The apocryphal story goes that 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:45.720 the word sabotage comes from the word sabo, which describes 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:50.800 the wooden shoes worn by laborers, mainly Dutch laborers, but 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:54.920 also laborers in France. And according to the story, these 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:58.960 laborers wore those shoes and used them to great effect. 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:02.400 In an effort to protest the conditions and factories, they 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:07.040 would toss their wooden shoes into the machinery to break 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:11.120 the various gears and literally grind production to a halt, 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:15.480 as it were. But this story, while compelling, isn't really 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:20.560 the truth. Sabotage does stem from the word sabo, but 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:25.240 in French there is a verb sabote. This verb means 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:29.880 to make a loud noise with wooden shoes. Now isn't 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:33.600 it great that there's a verb for that? And it 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:37.160 makes sense wooden shoes would make a great deal of 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:41.199 racket as people would walk around. Heck, if a toddler 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:44.120 wore wooden shoes, I think it would probably sound as 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:47.000 though the world were shaking apart. I don't know how 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:49.959 toddlers manage to sound like they weigh eight hundred pounds, 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:52.440 but they do it. And if you have a toddler, 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:55.880 you know what I'm talking about. And in the culture 0:12:55.920 --> 0:13:00.360 of France, the idea of a clumsy slow worker was 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:04.080 often linked to someone who wore wooden shoes because they're 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:09.520 awkward to wear anyway, The reason sabote led to sabotage 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:14.120 is because factory workers who were protesting their work conditions 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:19.040 and wages would purposefully work more slowly and less efficiently 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:22.520 in order to affect the overall output of a factory. 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:26.560 It was related to a similar strategy that British laborers employed, 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:29.640 and their version was called kakani. It was a saying 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:34.160 from Scotland which essentially means don't do so much man now. 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:36.560 I would argue this also feeds into a strategy that 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:39.760 we see to this very day in certain government offices, 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:42.560 where the idea is there's no need to do too 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:46.559 much too quickly, as it doesn't result in increased compensation 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:49.439 and it also sets a really high bar of expectation, 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:51.959 so why not just take it easy? You know, I 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:55.440 don't have a coffee break now. In the early twentieth century, 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:59.319 people began to use the word sabotage to really refer 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:04.080 to a purpose full approach to undermining the output of factories, 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:07.280 and it had nothing to do with tossing wooden shoes 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.880 into machinery, though it did also pertain to instances in 0:14:10.920 --> 0:14:16.120 which workers purposefully damaged equipment and tried to slow down 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:19.760 the production that way. While this isn't directly tied to 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:23.320 the idea that machines themselves are displacing workers, it is 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:27.560 related to the effect of moving toward a manufacturing based 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:32.120 economy and how that allows for the exploitation of workers. 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:36.760 The machines themselves aren't really at fault, but they facilitate 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:41.000 the system of operations that leads to exploitation. Now that's 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:44.320 something that'll be a theme in this episode, and we 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:47.400 can't ignore the social aspect of what's going on here, 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:51.160 or else we miss the whole point. But let's skip ahead. 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:54.640 I've spoken about this before, but we get the word 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:59.680 robot from a check author named Kyl Kopek. He wrote 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:03.840 a pl called Rossum's Universal Robots or R you Are 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:09.640 in nineteen twenty. Kopek took an older word rabota, which 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:14.200 means forced labor in Europe. This concept was tied to 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:17.640 that of the old system of serfdom, in which people 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:21.360 would do work on behalf of a landowner. In return, 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:24.640 those people would be allowed to live on part of 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:29.440 that landowner's land. In ru are factory owners devise a 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:33.960 way to build laborers from raw materials. Now in the play, 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:38.480 they are indistinguishable from humans other than they have no 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:43.040 inner desires. But in the course of the play, these 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:47.960 laborers eventually take over all the jobs that humans previously held, 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:52.760 and humans themselves become a threatened species as these laborers 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:56.440 begin to understand the power that they hold by occupying 0:15:56.720 --> 0:16:00.360 all the positions of employment, including as soldiers in the military. 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.720 And so with the introduction of the concept of robot, 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:07.440 we actually get the very first robotic uprising all the 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:11.160 way back in nineteen twenty. See I told you it 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:14.640 was an old idea. It's important to remember that in 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:18.520 the play, the robots are nearly identical to humans. They 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:23.040 aren't mechanical the way our robots of today are, but 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:25.920 the idea of creating machines that can do work without 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:30.000 a will of their own is a part of robotics 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:34.200 in general, and industrial robotics in particular. When we come back, 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:38.240 we'll talk about the earliest industrial robots and what they did, 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:49.400 But first let's take a quick break. It's interesting to 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:53.680 me that the tech world adopted the term robot when 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:57.160 we think about the origins of that word. In Cope's work, 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:01.920 robots were sentient slaves. They could perform the work humans 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:06.360 would otherwise do, but they lack the emotions that humans have, 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:10.480 and the whole idea is that these devices could do 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:14.800 our work for us without question or protest. They would, 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:19.520 in theory, endure conditions that people wouldn't or couldn't, But 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.959 in the play they ultimately lead to the destruction of 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:26.800 the human race and potentially they become the new dominant 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:30.440 species on the planet. Now. I say potentially because part 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:34.199 of the play's plot involves the destruction of the formula 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.720 that scientists use to produce the robots in the first place. 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:40.879 That is an important plot point. The robots are not 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:44.800 sure how to make more robots, so they might just 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:48.920 die out. Now, it seems to me as though that's 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:53.080 a pretty emotionally charged term to adopt for an entire 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:57.439 discipline of technology, right, robots, Especially if you are actually 0:17:57.480 --> 0:17:59.959 aware of that play, and by the way, I recommend 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:03.439 people read it. It's a good play. But then a 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:06.240 lot of people are not aware of the origins of 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:08.960 the word, or at least not beyond knowing that it 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:12.000 came from a play in the nineteen twenty So I 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:14.840 guess for them, it's just, you know, a word. A 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:18.080 robot by any other name would smell as sweet as 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:21.680 it were. And we've definitely seen the themes of rure 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:25.000 serving as an undercurrent for stuff that's happening in robotics 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:29.640 in general. But let's move ahead. In nineteen fifty four, 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:34.600 an engineer named George Duvault designed an industrial robot. He 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:38.760 was nine years old when Kopek coined the term robot. 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:44.239 He called his design the Programmed Article Transferred Device, for 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:48.080 which he received a US patent in nineteen sixty one. 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:51.880 This machine was a robotic arm, and it was capable 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:56.320 of picking up something and then transferring it a short 0:18:56.359 --> 0:18:59.200 distance away, just within reach of the arm. The arm 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:02.880 itself couldn't move, it was anchored in place. It could 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:05.280 also follow. In fact, this is the important part, It 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:08.800 would follow a pre program series of instructions to do this. 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:12.600 Deval's argument for his device was that up to this point, 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:17.680 mechanical handling of objects fell into two broad categories. Either 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:22.480 stuff got moved by humans, typically operating a powerful machine 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:26.080 like a crane or a forklift, or stuff got moved 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:30.520 by a device that operated under cam control. Now, manual 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:34.280 control is self explanatory, so let's talk about cams. A 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:39.320 cam is a rotating component in machinery. Typically a cam 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:43.000 has some variation in its surface. So let's start with 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:46.000 a wheel. Just imagine a wheel that is spinning on 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:50.440 an axle. Well, you wouldn't typically have a perfectly smooth 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:54.280 wheel as a cam. Part of that surface might be flat, 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:57.879 or it might have dips in it, And when the 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:01.960 cam rotates, these variations apply force to some other mechanical 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:05.800 component that is held against the cam, and it causes 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:10.080 that mechanical component to move in specific ways. A cam 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:13.440 operating system can work on its own, but it will 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:17.320 always repeat the exact same motions As long as everything 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:20.640 is working, it'll just repeat those steps. Once the cams 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:25.439 complete a full systematic rotation, you can't really adapt it 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.560 to do anything else. The movements depend entirely on the 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:31.600 cams themselves, so if you wanted it to do something else, 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:34.240 you would at first have to swap out the cams, 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.400 and even then you would be under whatever the limitations 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:41.800 of the device was itself, like it wouldn't have full 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:45.840 range of motion. Moreover, this level of specialization also means 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:50.240 that it's typically really expensive to rely upon cam based systems, 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:53.560 so it was really only useful if the application had 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:56.879 to do with mass manufacturing or else you're looking at 0:20:56.920 --> 0:20:59.280 an economic loss. The cost of the system was just 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:02.760 too much. So Devaal was proposing a machine that could 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:06.119 be programmed to do operations. And this would let a 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:10.639 programmer create different processes using the same machine. Or you 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:13.720 could get a whole bunch of the same basic machine 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:17.960 and program each one to do a particular job. Meanwhile, 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:20.440 you'd free people up to work on other stuff in 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:23.520 the manufacturing process, and you could take the most dangerous 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.119 stuff and give it to the robots. Now, the story 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:29.399 goes that Daval was at a party in nineteen fifty 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:31.720 six and he got into a conversation with a man 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:37.159 named Joseph Engelberger. Joseph was a scientist and an entrepreneur, 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:41.680 and when the subject turned to Deval's programmed article transferred device, 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:44.399 as well as the work of a science fiction author 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:48.320 known as Isaac Asimov, you know, the father of robotics. 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:51.800 He famously incorporated a concept of the laws of robotics 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:54.520 in his works. We won't really go into that in 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:57.840 this episode, but the laws of robotics still play a 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:02.600 big part in the discipline of robotics in general. But 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:06.480 it's kind of outside the focus of this episode. Ingelberger 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:10.080 used his connections to get funding for devauld to create 0:22:10.119 --> 0:22:13.640 a more advanced version of the programmed article transfer machine, 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:17.000 and it would be a robotic arm capable of making repeated, 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:21.280 precise movements while holding very heavy objects. They called it 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:28.880 the Unimate Unimate, and the first prototype, Unimate zero zero one, 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:31.880 would go to General Motors to work on a die 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:36.600 casting assembly line. Now, according to the company robot Works, 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:42.120 that's a WRX. This robot cost around sixty five thousand 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:45.000 dollars to produce, and Ingelberger sold it off at a 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:50.159 tremendous loss. General Motors only paid eighteen thousand dollars for 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:53.879 a sixty five thousand dollars machine. But Ingelberger really wanted 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:56.920 to establish that robotics were a way to perform repetitive, 0:22:57.119 --> 0:23:01.240 dangerous functions at a lower risk to humans. Welding die 0:23:01.280 --> 0:23:05.679 cast components on autobodies was a great first application of 0:23:05.680 --> 0:23:10.240 industrial robots for a few reasons. Die Casting is a 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:14.960 process involving molten metal. You take that molten metal and 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:17.960 you force it into steel molds, and these are water 0:23:18.200 --> 0:23:22.359 called dyes. The molten metal cools in the exact shape 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:25.160 of the mold. So this is a way to make 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:28.560 or cast a bunch of identical parts out of metal 0:23:28.800 --> 0:23:33.800 and get consistent quality out of it rather than forging 0:23:33.920 --> 0:23:37.280 each piece and then fitting them together. A dye can 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:41.120 have complex shapes in it, such as external threads, which 0:23:41.119 --> 0:23:44.160 means you don't have to make a pipe, for example, 0:23:44.200 --> 0:23:47.720 and then do a secondary process on that pipe to 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:49.520 get the result you want, So you wouldn't have to 0:23:49.600 --> 0:23:53.960 carve those threads into a otherwise smooth pipe. You could 0:23:54.000 --> 0:23:58.480 just cast the pipe with the threads incorporated on it already. 0:23:58.920 --> 0:24:03.240 But welding die cast parts onto autobodies is hard work. 0:24:03.440 --> 0:24:06.479 The components are really heavy, so you're at risk of 0:24:06.760 --> 0:24:09.960 immediate injury if something goes wrong, like let's say you 0:24:10.080 --> 0:24:13.360 drop a weighty component on your foot, or you might 0:24:13.600 --> 0:24:17.399 develop a repetitive stress injury after going through the same 0:24:17.520 --> 0:24:21.840 welding motions over and over again. In addition, the fumes 0:24:21.880 --> 0:24:25.600 given off while welding were sometimes toxic still are, so 0:24:26.040 --> 0:24:28.119 it's not great to have people exposed to them for 0:24:28.240 --> 0:24:31.199 very long. So a robot was a great substitute for 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:33.919 a person. The robot could handle much greater weight than 0:24:33.960 --> 0:24:37.280 people could The robot didn't breathe, so there was no 0:24:37.600 --> 0:24:41.000 respiratory issue there, and it didn't get tired. I mean, 0:24:41.040 --> 0:24:43.600 it would wear down over time, but you could repair 0:24:43.640 --> 0:24:47.640 it in fairly short order. The Unimate worked with computer 0:24:47.680 --> 0:24:52.200 controlled hydraulic systems. A hydraulic system uses a liquid that's 0:24:52.359 --> 0:24:56.120 under pressure in order to do work like pushing against 0:24:56.119 --> 0:24:58.800 a piston to power an actuator of some sort like 0:24:58.920 --> 0:25:03.520 lift a platform. The UNIMATE zero zero one weighed twenty 0:25:03.680 --> 0:25:07.320 seven hundred pounds or about one two hundred and twenty 0:25:07.359 --> 0:25:10.720 five kilograms, and it could work twenty four hours a day, 0:25:10.800 --> 0:25:15.080 placing components with a precision of within one fifty thousandth 0:25:15.320 --> 0:25:17.680 of an inch. Now I'm not going to do the 0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:20.120 conversion on that, because I think it's sufficient to say 0:25:20.200 --> 0:25:25.119 that it was just really precise. According to a charmingly 0:25:25.240 --> 0:25:29.720 dated newsreel from Britain, complete with swinging sixties music that 0:25:29.800 --> 0:25:32.480 sounded like it came straight off an Austin Powers movie, 0:25:32.840 --> 0:25:35.600 the robot could operate for five hundred hours without the 0:25:35.600 --> 0:25:38.840 need for a human to check in on it. Engelberger, 0:25:39.040 --> 0:25:43.520 a savvy businessman and promoter, would arrange for Unimate to 0:25:43.640 --> 0:25:47.120