Could Baxter the robot save our small factories?

Friday 15 Feb 2013

 
Chris Budnick is head of Vanguard Plastics, a small injection-molding operation in Southington, Conn., that makes plastic fixtures, gaskets and other "stuff no one cares about unless it breaks". On a computer screen, placed where all his workers can see it, Budnick displays what he considers the company’s key statistic: sales divided by man-hours.

Budnick, a Yankees fan who never misses a game on the radio, calls it his company’s “batting average.” Wages are his second-biggest expense (after raw materials), and sales have been slow. Even so, the figure stands at $206.8 per man-hour, above the previous year’s mark of 201. For Vanguard to stay in business, says Budnick, the figure has to go up by 1% or more every year. There’s only one way get there: produce more while working less.

That is why Budnick is now considering adding a new member to his team: a robot called Baxter. Baxter was conceived by Rodney Brooks, the Australian roboticist and artificial-intelligence expert who left MIT to build a $22,000 humanoid robot that can easily be programmed to do simple jobs that have never been automated before. More >>

Source: Mashable
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