Despite the original notion of robots working within, beside and around the auto industry dating back over 100 years ago to a 1921 play entitled Rossum’s Universal Robots, society continues to think of robots as limited, faux-human instantiations that help in rare use cases. Think Dr. Smith demeaning the robot in Lost in Space, C3PO shuffling behind R2D2 while whining incessantly or Data only approaching human emotion in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
All such images were built in the likeness of humankind, and were limited by some low-capability approximation, thereby falling way short of a person’s efficiency. And with that limited imagination and/or technical ability, automotive has deployed robots since the days of World War I via prescribed programming to effectively replace humans for mostly contained, manufacturing tasks such as pick-and-place, welding and stock delivery.
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