News reports back in the early 1980s continuously propagated the idea that Japan was far ahead of the US installing robots in manufacturing. Digging below the headlines, we could discover some pertinent technology facts.
We had two principle ways to pick parts, say off a conveyor, and place them into an assembly or on a pallet. One was a simple X-Y axis “pick-and-place”. The other was a 3-axis (or more) SCARA robot or a 5-axis robot (á la Fanuc or Asea). Japan considered all of the above as robots, whereas only the latter were considered robots in the US.
I really like News Items by John Ellis. He recently posted this news items sourcing The New York Times (hardly a bastion of authentic manufacturing information).
China is making and installing factory robots at a far greater pace than any other country, with the United States a distant third, further strengthening China’s already dominant global role in manufacturing. There were more than two million robots working in Chinese factories last year, according to a report released Thursday by the International Federation of Robotics, a nonprofit trade group for makers of industrial robots. Factories in China installed nearly 300,000 new robots last year, more than the rest of the world combined, the report found. American factories installed 34,000. While Chinese factories have been using more robots, they have also gotten better at making them. (Source: nytimes.com)
Perhaps China needs to install more robots because it is still catching up to US manufacturing? Not sure, but worth asking. Sometimes gross numbers from an industry group can be misleading. It’s like using percentages in places where percentage gain or loss is essentially meaningless.
I think another angle is to consider that the robot market in the US became mature. Even the collaborative robot market is saturating. Adding AI technologies and new form factors looks promising for expanding the market. I’d like to see much more depth—both from the IFR and the NYT.
More troubling was another item from the NYT on News Items.
New national test results for 12th graders, released this month, showed significant declines in students’ math and reading abilities since 2019, results that are now being felt in college and the labor market. On the national test, students’ reading scores were the worst in three decades, and math scores were the lowest since 2005. The scores are at least partially explained by the pandemic and school closures.
The numbers have not been good for quite some time. They offer an explanation that perhaps partially explains the drop. My neighbor, for example, taught 8th-grade math during the pandemic. She was frustrated trying to teach math over Zoom. But this is not a new phenomenon.
Anther contributor to the comparison numbers lies in the population. We test everyone in the US. Other countries do not test the entire population of students or may not have every child enrolled in that type of school.
So, the NYT falls into a trope:
But they also reflect broader societal changes, including an increase in time spent in front of screens for both young people and adults.
But they also point to something I’ve seen through the eyes of my wife—a long-time elementary school teacher.
The decline was primarily driven by lower-scoring students, who have been losing ground for a decade.
She was frustrated at both ends of the spectrum. Some parents didn’t care or were not supportive of their child. On the other hand, other parents pressed for special treatment, exemption from work, automatic better grades, and the like (helicopter or snow-plow parents).
They are correct in trying to come up with consequences:
The results have vast consequences for a generation of students, the U.S. economy and the country, which already ranks 28th in the world for math, behind Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and nearly every other major industrialized democracy. The world’s highest-performing countries not only produce students who outscore the brightest American students at the top. They also manage to lift far more students up to a base level of skill — something some experts believe is only going to become more important in a world of artificial intelligence.
What can you do to help? Offer to tutor? Find ways to encourage kids? Sponsor a First Robotics team?
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