A Sputnik II Moment

I was disappointed with the section of President Obama's 2011 State of the Union speech regarding investing in selected new technologies for future growth.

I had hoped he would use the word “robotics” and include the necessity for an American robotics industry in his speech and it is unfortunate that he did neither. That he focused his investment scope to exclude robotics might just be the death knell for the American robotics industry because, without national strategic focus, things will go on as they have… VERY slowly and very dependent on Space and Defense for research dollars.

A thriving robotics industry provides jobs, helps the nation increase efficiency, profitability and productivity and upgrades the mix of workers involved. Yet America doesn't presently have a national robotics agenda. Europe does. Japan does. Korea does. And each of these countries is gaining success and momentum worldwide.

Tom Atwood, editor-in-chief of Robot magazine, recently stated:

Although the government is beginning to wake up and push for an expansion of robotics education in schools with the DARPA-funded FIRE (Furthering Innovation through Robotics Exploration) program at Carnegie Mellon and the NSF-funded DARwIn-OP project at Virginia Tech, these and similar programs, by themselves, are not enough for our country to maintain its competitive technological edge. We need a national robotics policy that is specifically articulated in a clear call to action by our executive branch, and we need backing of such a program by Congress.

Pres. Obama was inspiring in his speech and his directness to the issues of the day, and his reference to a Sputnik II moment was wonderful as he attempted to address the need for American students to become involved in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs. This is a serious issue and a major difference between America and all of the other countries in which robotics flourish: STEM education takes extra dedication, energy, time and persistence which is not happening with American students; in fact there seems to be resistance to pursuing a career in science (except for a career in medicine, or on the business side of math - as a quant - which, even today, still equates to enormously big bucks.) The Sputnik reference was eloquent but, at least for robotics, empty.

Microsoft Kinect - add-on device for Xbox game controller

He missed some great technology examples.  One that I find particularly illuminating is the effect that the technology inside Microsoft’s new Xbox Kinect device has had. Kinect is a controller free gaming and entertainment experience. It enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 game system without the need to touch a controller, through a natural user interface using gestures and spoken commands. Not only have sales of Xboxes exploded but so have the applications and uses - and sales - of the cameras and depth-perception software inside the Kinect. iRobot and WillowGarage are using the $50 Kinect innards in lieu of LIDAR range-finder machines costing upwards of $5,000. Check out iRobot’s new AVA concept robot. Hackers and inventors worldwide have been finding new uses for the Kinect that Microsoft didn't even dream of. Now that’s inspiring!

There are many things happening in robotics in America. There's work underway - with some successes thus far - to get an American robotics roadmap funded and implemented and there's been a steady trickle-down effect from the research dollars spent on defense and space by NASA, DARPA and the DoD. Medical robotics are on a tear. There is independent investment as well. In Wisconsin, Indiana, Georgia, Massachusetts and Alabama, state-, corporate- and educationally-sponsored Robotic Centers are springing up to provide training in the programming, repair and maintenance of robots, as well as for research and testing. Alabama's recently opened Robotics Technology Park is a serious $73 million three-pronged endeavor to provide (1) an industry training program where technicians will be trained to work on robotic machinery; (2) a test facility for NASA and the US Army for research and testing of leading edge robotics for defense and space exploration; and (3) a facility to allow start-up companies to build and adapt robots for new industries. Imagine if this kind of state-inspired public-private forethought were done on a national level... now that's a Sputnik II moment.

Alison Diana at InformationWeek just did a piece on 12 Advances in Medical Robotics but failed to note that 2/3 of the vendors were not American.  Eight out of the 12 were Japanese, Korean or European. The ratio of industrial robot providers in America is even worse: although integrators, engineers and consultants tend to be American-owned, the major robot providers (KUKA, ABB, Comau, Denso, Schunk, Motoman, Daihen, Reis, Fanuc) are all foreign-owned. That is also a Sputnik II moment.

English Teaching Robot

In South Korea, robotic guides and docents patrol the Presidential Museum as 70,000 monthly visitors experience an advertisement of the nation’s cutting-edge technologies that made it a global leader in chips, mobile phones, TVs, display panels, and robotics that combine them all. South Korea is into the 5th year of a 10-year $1 billion investment in robotic technologies with a series of national goals endorsed by their President.

An example of how a nationally-directed strategic program works is when a shortage of English teachers compelled the South Korea government to use robotic teachers. They are deploying them in 500 preschools in 2011, and 8,000 preschools and kindergartens by 2013. It helps address the lack of English teachers in rural areas or remote islands. Learning English represents a necessary educational step for competitive South Korean students, and especially those aiming to study abroad at major universities in the U.S. Now that's a Sputnik II moment.

This is what was missing from President Obama's speech: the recognition that part of the underbelly of America's productivity and efficiency is automation and robotics. It's a very necessary industry which needs national direction. Mark Ingebretsen, the new editor of Robotic Trends Business Review,  adds an additional dimension to Pres. Obama’s exclusion of robotics, “the robotics that drive America’s economy and defense will be in the hands of other countries that have spent the early 21st century developing robot technologies.”

President Obama's call for action using the Sputnik II example is moot in relation to robotics without the formulation and acceptance of a roadmap and the establishment of a public-private consortium to implement it fully. A roadmap was presented in May, 2009 and some of it's provisions are slowly making their way through the halls of Congress. But there is no executive leadership thus far. If there were, Pres. Obama's Sputnik II moment would be a true call to action instead of pointless rhetoric.

Do robots take away jobs or just change the mix of workers?

All of us are thinking about jobs and the economy, and those of us that are techno-centric are also concerned about the discussion as to whether robots take away jobs -- or not. It's an argument that's been going on since the invention of robots. Hollywood has vilified robots while Asians think of them reverently. Nevertheless, the question is valid and disruptive. Disruptive in the sense that jobs are lost when a superior technology emerges - think workhorses when cars started to be mass-marketed. Our present digital era is a disruptive one.

Distributing the workload increases skill levels - think Microsoft Word versus stand-alone word processors, or travel agents when e-tickets and online airline websites surfaced.

Jeanne Dietsch, CEO of MobileRobots, said in her blog earlier this year:

Did people lose jobs to computers? Yes, a number of secretaries had to upgrade their skills, and executives who refused to learn to type had a tough time of it, just to cite two examples. But these jobs were replaced by tens of thousands of high-paying software engineering positions, plus computer installers, computer operators, data storage firms and more.

A very thoughtful and well researched paper about jobs and automation appeared in Good Magazine's "Automation Insurance: Robots Are Replacing Middle Class Jobs:

MIT economist David Autor

MIT economist David Autor published a report that looked at the shifting employment landscape in America. He came to this scary conclusion: Our workforce is splitting in two. The number of high-skill, high-income jobs (think lawyers or research scientists or managers) is growing. So is the number of low-skill, low-income jobs (think food preparation or security guards). Those jobs in the middle? They’re disappearing. Autor calls it “the polarization of job opportunities.” 

Princeton economist Paul Krugman is out there telling Congress to spend more money to create jobs. The former secretary of labor Robert Reich is arguing for tax breaks for the bottom brackets so people can buy stuff again. Here’s the thing, though: The erosion of the middle class is a phenomenon that’s bigger than the Great Recession. Middle-range jobs have been getting scarcer since the late 1970s, and wages for the ones that are still around have remained stagnant. 

In his report, Autor says that a leading explanation for the disappearance of the middle class is “ongoing automation and off-shoring of middle-skilled ‘routine’ tasks that were formerly performed primarily by workers with moderate education (a high school diploma but less than a four-year college degree).” Routine tasks, he explains, are ones that “can be carried out successfully by either a computer executing a program or, alternatively, by a comparatively less-educated worker in a developing country.”

The culprit, in other words, is technology. The hard truth—and you don’t see it addressed in news reports—is that the middle class is disappearing in large part because technology is rendering middle-class skills obsolete. 

People say America doesn’t make anything anymore, but that’s not true. With the exception of a few short lapses, manufacturing output has been on the rise since the 1980s. What is true is that industrial robots have been carrying ever more of the manufacturing burden on their steely shoulders since they appeared in the 1950s. Today, a Japanese company called Fanuc, Ltd., has industrial robots making other industrial robots in a “lights out” factory. (That’s the somewhat unsettling term for a fully automated production facility where you don’t need lights because you don’t need humans.)

Research findings like this are just part of the current dialogue about whether robots are truly taking away jobs or just redistributing the workforce and increasing productivity.

Omitted from Autor's report, however, was that part of the dialogue which deals with investments in education and research and development. Because of intense focus (some might say greedy) on quarterly profits and production efficiencies to meet those quarterly quotas, we've had a decade where R & D has either been reduced or off-shored. Further, because of wars and other reasons, there's been less investment in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education - budget cuts - although the Obama Administration has been showing signs of renewed interest in this area in the last few months.

John Dulchinos, CEO, Adept

Earlier this year John Dulchinos, the CEO of Adept, during an interview with GetRobo's Noriko Kageki, made a dramatic observation:

Did you know that there are a billion cell phones per year being made globally of which 200-300 million are sold in the U.S. but not a single one is built in the US? Ten years ago that was not the case. 

If the industry can’t remain competitive, then there are no jobs. And robots are automating tasks no longer done by hand.  But in almost all cases those people are redeployed into other applications in the plant and allow the plant to grow and get even more efficient.

Foxconn workers

Sad but true. Even iPhones (and iPads, Macs and iPods) are manufactured in China. As many as 400,000 of the workers at Foxconn produce Apple products. (Foxconn has been in the news because that's the place where there were so many suicides and suicide attempts.) Thus the question is whether companies can compete from nearby manufacturing facilities or must they, in order to produce a low-cost product, resort to off-shoring. Many think that robotics and government investments in STEM education and vocational retraining can help the economy rather than enlarge the disparity described by Autor.

British pottery manufacturer Wade Ceramics is one such proponent of stay-at-home automation, and says Wade can now make some of its products for the same costs as firms in China – thanks to a £3 million investment in robotic equipment. Managing Director Paul Farmer, in a recent article in The Sentinel, said:

We haven't lost permanent staff because we have been busy in other parts of the business... We have lost some agency workers, but we have kept the permanent workforce stable. We are growing and in fact we are starting to recruit again... At the moment we're looking for engineers and machine operators.

Wage levels in China are going up and I believe the minimum-order quantities there are huge. This [robotic] technology and our flexibility means we can really exploit that.

Mr Farmer believes automation is becoming more important as traditional skills become harder to find.

There isn't any young blood coming through and we are all having to fight each other for the skills out there.

Wade Ceramics is representative of a very real situation: a shifting, reduced or diminishing workforce due to a variety of causes.  The effect is that Wade is having difficulty finding skilled labor to man its factories.  The same situation is appearing in certain areas around the world, Japan in particular. And robotics is playing a role in remedying the situation.  It seems to me that robotics and automation are inevitable and it's incumbent on governments to upwardly retrain and educate the workforce accordingly.