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little robots. As I reflected on the trip, I realized that there were huge
differences between the first-and second-tier factories that we visited.
At the low-end factories, there were people everywhere: three people
running each injection molding machine to press buttons, inspect parts,
and so on. In contrast, at the high-end factories, there was no one on the
assembly floor; there was only the rhythmic buzz, click, and whir of
gantries and robot arms doing all the work automatically. Wait a
minute: if the best manufacturers had robotized their entire operations
due to Chinese labor getting so expensive in the last few years, perhaps
throwing our lot in with an automated manufacturer would be short-
sighted. Anyway, our company makes robot construction kits—so if
anyone is set up to robotize and automate a factory, it's us!
Typically, when you automate a factory, you'll pick up a few
million-dollar KUKA or ABB robot arms or a Baxter robot that makes
smiley faces at you. These approaches entail a huge financial invest-
ment, and they're massive overkill for the work that we do. Our com-
mercial products are tiny, simple robots, and many of the assembly
tasks involved in their construction are tiny, simple tasks. We built
some more tiny, simple robots to automate repetitive tasks and save
time and money on our factory floor called FARKUS. FARKUS is the
open source Factory Automation Robotics Kit for US (
Figure 12.7
)
!
That's “us” like in
you and me and all of us,
not like in
United States,
by the way.
