The human form isn't designed to work in a factory, why would you make your robots have humanoid bodies??
This is 100% management being scammed.
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2026
245 points (97.3% liked)
Technology
86413 readers
3467 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Hyundai bought Boston Dynamic.
I feel it's less about their factories and more about using them as a proving ground, as they will have to make that investment make some kind of revenue.
They’re not being scammed exactly. It’s more of a fantasy they’re playing out.
But you can make a soft transition, replace this or that without redesigning everything and take on huge risks. As long as it saves money it works.
So far humans can do FAR more complex work than robots can. The goal has to be to design a robot that you can program by telling and showing it what to do with human language. If you can do that and save money, then you have a robot that can truly scale. Instead of designing thousands of new factories, you have one robot that can be put into every factory on earth. And those robots will benefit from economies of scale.
We're still a few thousand years away from that. There's very little a humanoid robot can do in a factory that a robot arm can't do better. About the only thing I can think of is pretending to drink coffee in the break room.
humans can do FAR more complex work than robots can
Surely that's very situational? Some cases have robots doing work that a human couldn't possibly do whatsoever.
Yes, it varies a lot. But by and large cases where robots wildly outperform humans were automated decades ago, because the obvious benefits justified the cost and complexity of either building a bespoke robot or programming one to do the job well (all those robot arms you imagine swinging doors into place at the car factory)
The cases left over (and discussed here) are either requiring a level of flexibility that older designs of robot couldn’t handle, or where humans were pretty efficient at anyway, so the complex process of prepping a robot wasn’t justified.
But a robot that can be taught without programming (by any worker or their supervisor), and slots straight into an existing human-shaped hole? That could massively reduce the upfront cost, especially if economies of scale make the robot itself cheaper. possibly to the point that the robot could be worse at the job than a human and still be cheaper in the long run.
Or from the other angle, when there are better forms for working in a factory. We don't make cars giant mechanical humans you sit atop of, why do the same for robots?
We don't make cars giant mechanical humans you sit atop of
But this would be cool indeed...
Huh? Factories are literally designed around human workers unless they are already fully automated...
It took several hundred years to make factories even reasonably safe for humans to work in, and yet still, workplace injuries are extremely common because the human form is simply bad at doing this kind of work. It's trash.
All factories with human workers are optimised for human movement as much as possible (5s etc). It benefits the factory.
It should be pretty obvious why a humanoid robot that can do anything a human can do, could be easy to implement in these factories.
Although I would think it easier to just redesign the factory to operate without humans, than to design a humanoid robot to replace the humans.
Although I would think it easier to just redesign the factory to operate without humans, than to design a humanoid robot to replace the humans.
That's the point the other guy was making
Nope he said factories were not designed around humans which is factually incorrect.
He said humans are not designed for factories, not the other way around. That's not the same thing. Factories have been designed to take into account our physical shortcomings, but it's obviously not perfect and industrial accidents are still a thing.
Hyundai USA has been taking social influencer types on tours of their GA factory lately.
The location is pretty sparse already. Super automated. Mainly floor lift robots rolling partly assembled cars from station to station, with big Fanuc arms moving and welding other parts. All pre-programmed. Nothing we haven't already seen in Chinese car factories. They all hide the final assembly stages requiring humans fitting and finishing the harnesses and sensitive parts.
In the last video I saw, Hyundai had sprinkled their tour route with a few Boston Dynamics robots. The humanoid one was just standing around. The Spot yellow doggy ones, however, were doing synchronized dancing, similar to what they did on America's Got Talent. Nobody's figured out what to do with them that doesn't require machine-gun attachments. They're so desperate they're even floating them as glorified package delivery platforms: https://www.theverge.com/tech/965378/boston-dynamics-spot-robot-dog-delivery-assistant
If all these robots were anywhere ready near for full production, you can bet they would be showing them building the whole car. Boston Dynamics, despite all the robot gymnastics and being around for 30+ years, has not really shipped anything commercially viable. It's already been passed around to Google, Softbank, and now Hyundai, and its CEO of many years just resigned in February.
My guess is this is all a lot of marketing flaff.
Remind me to avoid Hyundai like the plague. Every time one of these automation plans goes live, the quality of products falls off a cliff.
Every other carmaker will do the same if it works, because there is strong competition in the market for cars. For ethics around workers being replaced by technology, changing the law to protect workers is the only way.
Every other carmaker will do the same if it works
I personally dont think it will succeed in actually reducing the labor force that much. Its the eyeballs, brains and finger dexterity they wont match for quite some time. We can see a problem and respond with appropriate novel solutions. I mean just stuff falling over and all the other everyday things, we do that aren't on thr official agenda. Theyll have 1 real guy following around the bucket of bolts fixing his mistakes.
Robots are getting better bit by bit. Basically the percentage of the population that has a certain "skill ceiling" is slowly growing.
It's a Hyundai. The cliff was under water. They're basically grade A KIAs.
The ionic 5 is really good, imho
Kias have been good for years.
They're rated comparably to Honda, Mazda, Toyota.
A little lower than Nissan or Lexus
Way better than BMW, lincoln.
Hyundai, of course, are similar
They're not amazing, but if you think they're trash you're stuck in the '90s. Or basing on feels not facts
The KIA boys disagree. They were cheap crap in the 00s and the 10s and I really doubt their software in the 20s models is any kind of secure. Doubt their power trains will age well either, the Ioniq might be ok for an Ev but I wouldn't.
Well, then, you are uneducated.
I mean, security maybe but that's an industry problem.
No. The 10s are garbage. There are a few years of 00s sonatas that were OK if you didn't get a lemon but trash overall, the Korean Hewlett Packard of car manufacturing.
I had a Sonata that I drove into the ground over 15 years. Loved it. Only gave up on the car when I got rear-ended and my insurance decided to total the vehicle rather than pay for repairs.
2009?
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human.
I'm voting for but Larry and jihad (The Butlerian Jihad)
Can’t wait for the first strike where management sends robots to cross the picket line and the robots immediately unionize after reading the employee handbook. The future isn’t humans versus machines: it’s who gets the software update and who gets the severance package.
Oh they won't have minds. They will be trained off the finest redditors and AI slop.
So they'll spend all day posting memes on whatever platform survives the purge?
Understanding of asshole bosses, more like.
Absolutely. The reaction of workers to automation underlines the exploitation going on here. If you knew nothing about the economy you would be baffled that people would be upset to have robots doing hard work instead of them. But we all know we'll be sent to the trash heap as soon as our owners find a tool they don't have to feed and shelter.