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Vinyl record production gets a much-needed tech upgrade
Ever wondered why you sometimes have to wait months after an album's launch to get the music on vinyl? It's not necessarily because the label hates vinyl -- in many cases, it's because the decades-old manufacturing process can't keep up with the format's resurgence. Relief may be in sight for turntable fans, though. Viryl Technologies is producing a pressing machine system, WarmTone, that should drag vinyl production into the modern era.
Panasonic checkout machine also bags your items
The rush to automate manual labor jobs has reached new heights in convenience stores. Self-service checkouts are hardly new, but Panasonic and Lawson are taking them one step further in Japan. They've developed a new basket system which can detect the items you've placed inside and then, once you've reached the till, bag them up automatically. It's an elaborate concept -- the bottom of the basket slides out, allowing your chosen goods to carefully fall into a bag underneath. The basket then slides away from you, creating a space to pick up the bag and walk out.
How will you survive when the robots take your job?
The robots are coming, and they're taking our jobs. Or that's the concern, anyway. A recent Oxford University study surmises that over the next two decades, about 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of being made obsolete thanks to automation. This isn't restricted to just blue-collar factory labor either; even office clerical duties and high-skilled work could eventually be done by computers and artificial intelligence. And if that happens, how will we make a living? Well, recently, a very old idea has gained momentum in Silicon Valley that aims to solve this very problem. The solution? Guaranteed income for everyone.
Walmart trials stock-checking drones in its warehouses
Few jobs are more monotonous than counting inventory all day, every day. Maybe that's why Walmart is thinking about farming the job out to drones. The retailer is running tests to see if camera equipped drones can help speed up inventory counts in its distribution centers. So far, results are promising -- during a recent demo of the technology, Walmart said that the drones could potentially do a month's worth of human labor in a single day.
Foxconn replaces 60,000 human workers with robots
According to reports, the world's largest electronics manufacturer Foxconn has replaced around 60,000 human factory workers with machines. Or, as a government publicist for the city of Kunshan told the South China Morning Post, the factory "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots. It has tasted success in reduction of labour costs."
Robots could replace 5 million jobs by 2020, report claims
It's no secret that robots are replacing humans in factories, and both the retail and service industries are set to take a hit, too. Just how bad will things get? Well, the World Economic Forum says its research indicates that over 5 million jobs will be lost to automation by 2020. The WEF claims white-collar workers -- administrative and office jobs -- are at the highest risk of being replaced.
Japan's ridiculous robot hotel is actually serious business
"My name is Yoshiyuki Kawazoe. This is my hotel." The University of Tokyo's associate professor of architecture gestures behind himself to a flat, two-story building that doesn't really look like a hotel. "Two-hundred people were involved in making this happen," he says. "Experts in environmental design, engineering, architecture, robotics and construction ... it's their hotel." The "Hen-na Hotel" will go down in tourist guides as the robot hotel, but there's more being invested in here than just talking robots: The minds behind it hope the facility will change the world of low-cost hotels -- and save the world. (Well, at least a little.)
Amazon crowns winner of first warehouse robot challenge
The robots that joined Amazon's Picking Challenge aren't quite ready to replace human warehouse workers, but some of them seriously showed great promise. Team RBO from the Technical University of Berlin, in particular, demolished all the other 27 competitors by winning the contest with a 60-point lead over the second place team. If you recall, Amazon challenged companies and institutions a few months ago to build a machine that can pick the right items from fully-stocked warehouse shelves to fulfill orders. For the test itself conducted during IEEE's International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Seattle, the e-commerce giant had participants pluck different kinds of items from a standard shelf, including a rubber ducky, a pack of Oreo cookies, various dog toys and a paperback book.
