INSIDE an obscure warehouse in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, the robot revolution is under way, but it is far from glamorous. The test lab is hot, steamy and a bit dusty. Dozens of giant, aquamarine-coloured units are whirring and gyrating in patterns designed to test their endurance as they do polishing, machining and assembly. And forget about artificial intelligence: these tireless drudges will not move autonomously or learn by doing.
“We are a business,” explains Day Chia-Peng of the robotics group at Foxconn, the contract-manufacturing arm of Hon Hai of Taiwan. And his frugal bosses will not pay for his team to make flashy kit that does not add value. Foxconn says it already has more than 30,000 robots in use, including thousands at a factory in Chengdu that has fewer than 100 workers. Besides making bespoke robots in-house, the firm has also invested $118m in a division of Softbank, the Japanese firm that makes Pepper, an advanced automaton (pictured).
The push into robotics as a producer, not just a user, is just one part of Hon Hai’s strenuous attempts to diversify. Foxconn is so good at high-quality, high-volume...
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1NcGfjk
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