The Robot Revolution

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Albus, head of the robotics research laboratory at the National Bureau of Standards in Gaithersburg, Md., "is now poised on the brink of a new industrial revolution that will at least equal, if not far exceed, the first Industrial Revolution in its impact on mankind."

That first revolution, which began two centuries ago, created the technology of modern life, but at a high cost in hardship and hunger. Some experts see analogous dangers in the robot revolution. If robots can do men's work faster, better and more cheaply, then what will men do? They will be retrained for other things, the robotmakers answer. But by whom, and for what? Almost 20 years ago, Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano portrayed a future society in which the elite few run the machines while the unemployable majority subsists on handouts in resentful idleness. "It's an enormous problem," concedes Luigi Lazzaroni, president of the Italian firm that makes the Pragma robot. "Many will have to learn how to work differently. The schools, the industrial firms and the government must cooperate to ensure that the workers are able to fit the requirements of industry."

In the U.S., the robot revolution originates in American industry's most fundamental problem: the stagnation in productivity. From 1947 to 1965, U.S. productivity increased by 3.4% a year, but the growth rate dipped to 2.3% in the following decade, then dropped to below 1% in the late 1970s and down to —.9% last year. (Japan's productivity growth, by contrast, has been climbing at an average annual rate of about 7.3%.) Now that economic planners are trying to work out methods of "reindustrializing" the U.S., they can see in the robot a major answer to those productivity declines.

Not only can the robot work three shifts a day, but it takes no coffee breaks, does not call in sick on Mondays, does not become bored, does not take vacations or qualify for pensions—and does not leave Coca-Cola cans rattling around inside the products it has helped assemble. Its "up time" on the job averages around 95% (the figure for the average blue-collar worker is about 75%). In addition to its Horatio Alger work habits, it is immune to government and union regulations on heat, fumes, noise, radiation and other safety hazards. The robot has no affections or passions. If you prick it, it does not bleed. If you poison it, it does not die.

Two key developments have brought the industrial robot to life.

One was technological, the development in the mid-'60s of the microprocessor, a computer so small that it can be fitted onto a silicon chip no bigger than a pea. As the computer shrank in size and cost, it suddenly became practical as the brains to run a robot. The second development was wage inflation. Two decades ago, a typical assembly-line robot cost about $25,000; that, plus all operating costs over its eight-year lifetime, amounted to about $4.20 an hour, slightly more than the average factory worker's wages and fringe benefits. Today that typical robot costs $40,000 (they range from $7,500 to $150,000), and it can still be paid for and operated at $4.80 an hour; the worker often costs $15 to $20. That is the formula for a gold rush.

The robot revolution is just beginning, but it is already moving fast. Scarcely a decade has passed since General Motors