Isn’t it amazing to see how far technology has come over the years? Look at your cellphone, then look back at what you had 10 years ago. If you did have a mobile phone, it did little more than simply place and receive calls. Now it can do more functions than your PC, PDA, and another dozen devices combined. Unfortunately, what it still can’t do is survive a quick dunk in the pool. Sure, there are watertight cases, but those tend to impede your ability to do things like listen to music, because the speakers are covered. What you need is a large, portable, waterproof speaker.
The ECOROX is a portable Bluetooth speaker that can not only survive a quick dip in the pool, it can hang out in there, blasting your favorite tunes for hours. This set of 6 watt stereo speakers is housed in a waterproof body, and designed to float beside you. Just pair it with your smartphone sitting safely away from the water, and you can rock out to your favorite tunes without any risk. You’ll even be able to take calls at the press of a button, so you never miss a call.
If swimming isn’t your thing, and you’re more of a biker, this device works for you, too. The ECOROX was designed to be mounted to the handlebars of a bike. Never again will you have to worry about the elements harming your speakers. Of course, you’ll still have to worry about upsetting the people around you, if your music is up too loud as you ride past.
You’re going to get 10 hours of talk or playtime out of each 2.5 hour charge. Recharging is handled by a micro-USB cable, and a standard 3.5mm jack offers compatibility with virtually any audio device. You can purchase your own in black, red, or orange for just $130. You can find a handlebar or suction cup mount on the site for just $10 each, as well.
Of planet Earth’s estimated 1,240,000 operational industrial robots, about 230,000 were made in Japan and sold around the world by Yaskawa Motoman. Earlier this week, they opened their first overseas factory in China, which means that the Chinese are building robots for the Japanese in China to sell to China. It’s totally meta.
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The Robots: Those who like robots but live their lives outside of industrial robo-geekery probably know Yaskawa Motoman not by name, but by the YouTube footprint of various machines dealing cards, making food, playing golf, assembling stuff, stacking stuff, etc. The semi-humanoid SDA10F (sometimes called Dexter Bot), for example, might be familiar:
SDA10F “Dexter Bot” Dealing Cards at IMTS 2012
Yaskawa Motoman is the industrial robotics division of the nearly 100 year-old Yaskawa Electric Corporation, a global electronics and manufacturing firm based in Kitakyushu, Japan. Until now, all their robots have been produced right here on the archipelago, but just a few days ago they opened their first factory in China. The new facility in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province is reportedly now the world’s largest-capacity industrial robot factory. The manufacturing robots to be manufactured there will be used primarily to manufacture automobiles (welding, painting, and materials handling).
“So, will industrial robots be building industrial robots in this industrial robot factory?!”
Sure, a valid question that immediately pops up among the more… robo-enthusiastic, but for actual assembly and such, the answer appears to be no (left & middle below). However, below on the right, in a screen capture from NHK coverage of the announcement, an industrial robot is spray painting an industrial robot at the facility. Cool, but not exactly all Terminator Skynet robots-building-robots pre-apocalypse or anything.
The Big Why Might Be a Big Problem: Most of the Japanese & Chinese news outlets, the vast bulk of the coverage, included some kind of cursory statement about increasing labor costs in China being the Why of all this, but no one’s just come out and said “Hey, it’s like this: robots don’t complain about low wages, they don’t get hurt, don’t take breaks, they rarely commit suicide – you know, all that stuff those soft and sensitive mammals do. They might cost a lot in the beginning, but they’ll quickly pay for themselves.” Yeah of course, there’s a lot to gain from implementing robotic labor… for those who can buy it – not so much for those to be displaced.
But this isn’t new news – about two years back, Xin Hua News reported on Foxconn’s plans to further incorporate robotic labor into its massive force of 1.2 million humans. The big-picture intention was to increase the number of robotic “workers” from 10,000 then to 1,000,000 over three years. We’ll see what next year brings, but it’s clear that human labor has become a troubling cancer in the profit stream of the World’s Factory; a once inexhaustible, malleable, cheap Chinese labor force has become a bit adversarial and increasingly expensive. Captains of Chinese industry like Foxconn’s Terry Gou, having years ago foreseen as much, are now beginning to implement work-ready, eventually profit-positive, human rights-neutral, therefore preferable robotic labor.
And that’s why Yaskawa’s getting open armed into China.
For now it’s heavy labor, but realistically, are there really a whole lot of manufacturing jobs left that are doable by human hands alone? Baxter from Rethink Robotics and Nextage from Kawada Industries, as examples, offer proof that squishy five-fingered labor is far from a growth sector – and the technology isn’t exactly standing still.
Market economics, the capitalism, it’s what we humans do, and it seems to be best economic system we can realistically implement – or at the very least it’s the least of many possible evils. Time and time again, however, we’ve witnessed burgeoning, fast-growth market economies display ferocious ineptitude when it comes to self-regulation. In that vein, could a widespread, highly profitable in the short-term, relatively sudden transition to robo-labor destroy China’s economy? That’s a big negative. Could it give China’s economy a seizure? Maybe, maybe yeah.
And maybe China’s industrial leaders, faced with the most challengingly massive human labor pool on the planet, will take it slow and safe. But, slow and safe doesn’t buy yachts and islands, as the kids these days often say – so you gotta wonder: are Terry Gou and his peers silly and profit-drunk enough to roboticize the world’s second largest economy into bubble-esque recession? Could massive manufacturing layoffs even produce such an effect? Hard to say, but unless robots suddenly start getting less effective and more expensive, we will find out.
And you know, Japan, rather recently demoted to the world’s third largest economy, yet so very enthusiastically investing in robots for its largest trading partner’s labor market (Yaskawa’s not alone), probably wouldn’t mind moving back up.
Hey… ahhhhh, ohhhh, Yaskawa! Well played, well played.
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.
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