What's wrong with myths?
The answer is simple. Various stigmas and prejudices hinder the spread
Myth one. Robots are relevant only in high-tech industries
This hasn't been the case for a long time.Regardless of what an enterprise does, there is only one main criterion for the introduction of robotics - the need to do a large number of identical operations with high speed and predetermined quality. Similar premises were guided by Henry Ford when he introduced the conveyor, or the ideologists of industrialization when they filled the industry with machine tools. But if the machines in production have not scared anyone for a long time, then robots seem to be something too progressive and even redundant.
You need to understand how a robot differs from a machine.The key difference is autonomy. The machine is “sharpened” for specific specific operations (for example, drilling) and requires constant monitoring by the operator. The robot, on the other hand, can be programmed for many different tasks (for example, moving, positioning and post-processing), that is, it is more versatile. It is enough to change the nozzle and set a new program.
The simplest example is robotic manipulators,imitating the functionality of the human hand. They differ in "span" (from a few tens of centimeters to 3-4 meters), carrying capacity (some samples can lift several hundred kilograms) and accuracy. Manipulators can be used in a variety of enterprises - from mechanical engineering to the production of medicines. Large Fanuc robots at Tesla factories are responsible for grinding parts and assembling car frames, allowing the company to produce up to 5,000 cars a week, and Universal Robots' miniature UR10 arm helps maintain sterility at enterprises that assemble microprocessors or manufacture drugs.
Myth two. Robots are limited in functionality
In fact, due to autonomy, diversitymodels and possible modifications, the use of robots in enterprises is limited only by the imagination of a person. But this idea is a bit utopian, and in reality, robotization really runs into limitations.
Robots have a significant disadvantage - lessCompared to humans, flexibility in conditions of frequently changing production capacity. For example, if a business experiences a sharp decline in demand for a particular product, it can easily reassign people to another line and focus efforts on more in-demand items while a robot sits idle in an unused area.
However, potential problems associated withrobotization, as a rule, creeps into the project at the stage of calculations and preparation of technical specifications - and it turns out that the robot may not reveal its full potential. Thus, an incorrectly calculated performance of the next production process leads to the fact that the robot rests on a “bottleneck” and works at half strength. Or an incorrect analysis of the demand for the process leads to the fact that the need for a robot eventually disappears.
Conclusion:robotization projects are complex in terms of implementation and contain many pitfalls, therefore, they require experience from the project team and the organization of close interaction between all enterprise services and the integrator. Especially at the implementation stage: multiple “monuments” of unsuccessful projects across the country can serve as an example of this, when a purchased robot simply gathers dust under a cover due to errors in forecasts, planning and drafting terms of reference.
Also, sometimes you have to deal withinsufficient technical culture of servicing robots, for example, neglecting the planned replacement of any nodes. There are both unscrupulous integrators and low-quality robots. But if at the design stage all the calculations were made correctly, in the future, major problems, as a rule, do not arise.
Myth three. Robots are expensive
Talking about the high cost of robots is not entirely correct. When it comes to an enterprise with a multi-million dollar turnover, it is not the cost itself that matters, but the speed of payback.
Of course, a robot is not cheap, sopays off only on large volumes of production. But human labor is also not free. So, at one of the metallurgical enterprises, a robot is used to make molds for casting parts. One robot is able to produce many spare parts for machine tools and other equipment without the need to involve a lot of specialists in the process, including from third-party companies.
It is important to remember that in matters of paybackthe exception may be cases when a robot replaces a person when working in dangerous conditions - organizations go to gratuitous expenses for the sake of people's safety. At one of the enterprises of the NLMK group, the robot is used to break the lining - in other words, to dismantle the base of the steel furnace. Rescue services use robots to clear mines and work in areas with an unfavorable chemical or radioactive background. And since the 2010s, robot scouts have been actively involved in helping miners who, due to an explosion or collapse of the mine, were under the rubble.
Other "specific" applications of the robot can bebe operations that are highly influenced by the human factor. When the price of a mistake is too high and bears multimillion-dollar risks, it is easier to purchase an expensive robot once and be sure of the stability of production than to save money, but pay a multiple amount later. The most obvious example is rocket science, where the cost of a single launch often reaches hundreds of millions of dollars. Relativity Space uses several networked KUKA robots as a giant 3D printer to produce high-tech rocket engines. Thus, it is possible to achieve a minimum dependence of the process on human participation.
Myth four. Robots can take over humans
The most important misconception that haunts mankind is not the first decade. There is nothing wrong with dangerous, hard, or boring work being done by robots instead of humans.
And those released after robotization of productionjobs appear elsewhere: it is obvious that implementing and servicing robots is much more interesting than shifting a part from place to place 100 times per shift. Ideally, the introduction of robots should free people from monotonous work to solve creative problems more typical of our minds.
In the near future, robots will not workinstead of people, but together with them. Suffice it to recall the Da Vinci robotic surgical system, which saves the surgeon from nervous strain due to the need to calibrate every movement. At the same time, the robot still needs control from a specialist - it just has more resources to think about the next steps of the operation.
Myth five. Robots are still heavily dependent on humans
Taking into account the constantly evolvingscientific and technological progress and the growing pace of autonomization, today, with the correct configuration of the robot, human intervention is extremely rarely needed. Mainly for scheduled maintenance (oil change, checking for damage).
Over the past few years, technologyArtificial intelligence has made a huge step forward, and algorithms based on neural networks or machine vision are already actively used in robots, especially in terms of the security system, for example, to recognize obstacles. Anthropomorphic and dog-like robots from Boston Dynamics use machine vision and artificial intelligence to navigate and coordinate movements, and amaze the untrained viewer with their grace.
Who knows, perhaps in just a couple of years, robots will become completely independent of humans - and will make all the key decisions about their work on their own. Of course, within the framework of the program.
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Cover photo: Image by Freepik