I am a roboticist in a cheese factory | Hacker News Reader

I am a roboticist in a cheese factory

blogs.scientificamerican.com

139 pointsfern1289 comments

I come from an Industrial Engineering background and I really liked this quick overview of the job. The cost of robotic arms has dropped considerably in the last ~10 years. Glancing through Ebay quick, you can get tons of robotic arm models for less than $20,000. I anticipate many more processes getting automated in the next couple years especially with the rapid pace of computer vision improvements we're seeing. Like a lot of things, running a factory can look and sound easy until you get to actually doing it. Some things that can really trip up a factory:

* Improper product from upstream processes (wrong dimensions, doesn't assemble, wrong physical properties, etc).

* Unplanned downtime.

* Being behind on production goals (meaning they won't stop the machine for you to install and test your new widget that might fix everything).

* Management turning down many very useful OEM upgrades on a cost basis.

* Imbalanced production rates. The bottleneck of the factory should be the primary focus for improvements.

And for a fun fact: lubricant used in food production equipment must be safe for humans. For this reason, vegetable oil and similar products are often used.

Yep! I work in the steel construction industry. Damn near every day, typically mid to late afternoon, an order comes from on high: "this has to be on the truck at 6am tomorrow", but you also have to continue to meet the existing deadlines. Then you lose an hour of production because a machine needs maintenance or breaks down.

This is why we work 54hr weeks. All the time.

Ah yes, the emergency shipment that must go out ASAP and throws a wrench in dozens of other orders who were previously scheduled to maximize throughput.

Unfortunately you can't really tell management "a lack of planning on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on my part". Contracts often have penalties for late delivery or worse, running a vendor managed inventory level to 0 (full on stopping production costing many thousands of dollars per hour).

We have the exact same problem. Why can't sales just put a 2 day notice for orders in the contract?

Well, it depends. Scrambling the production might be worth it if it doubles the margin. Without knowing the price they're quoting for the "emergency order" it's hard to judge what the business case is.

I am a bit concerned about scrambling workers and production lines in heavy industry, though. Makes me question the safety of pushing tired workers to work faster/longer hours...

Commissions (which makes up a large part of a salesperson’s compensation).

Others are commenting about the 54 hours. Probably because it almost comes off as you are proud of the number. I've been around people before who've boasted about how long their job hours are -- it comes off in bad taste. I'm aware that in many industries you simply won't keep your job if you don't do these ridiculus hours. Even as a newly hired dev at Amazon, my manager tried to coerce me into doing free overtime - as if because I was new I owed something to the company... I eventually quit because that's bullshit. Its in poor taste to be proud of being taken advantage of. Hope you make the best of it.

In poor taste? What's in poor taste here is an individual working in an extremely privileged field (in terms of job security, ease of finding work, and pay scales) attempting to issue a style guide for blue collar workers. For people that actually work for a living this kind of work ethic is a self-defense mechanism. The alternatives are frequently minimum wage service jobs or homelessness. If you feel this strongly about worker's rights (and you should) you might consider volunteering with AFL-CIO organizing efforts in your community. Simple sneering will not suffice.

Read my comment again. I said I was aware that some jobs provide no alternative. I did not sneer - in fact I wished him the best. My main point is that many of these workers have the wrong mindset - they get taken advantage of because they are proud about how they have such a ballbusting job-- when in reality many times they are simply being violated. Usually by the direct manager. It is often hard to see outside of ones' direct work environment to gain a perspective. It really depends on the average conditions in that industry and whether they have options. Hopefully the worker is diligent and doesn't get an uneven workload compared to the industry norm. But it takes mindset and effort not to get bamboozled. All I mean is for the best..not trying to talk down to anyone who is a hard worker..

It certainly is a bit ballbusting, but as someone who was an injecting meth user on-and-off for the better part of 10 years up until about 5 years ago, and now has a stable job in a beautiful part of the world, plenty of well paid overtime at a great company, a home loan, and a 1.5 minute commute to work.

Fuck it, I'll take it. Might as well throw in some pride as well.

YMMV!

There are very few individuals here in a privileged position. Many here are working long hours for a startup about to fail and most are trying to meet ends in the most expensive cities in the world.

You assert that folks working for startups do so out of necessity and not choice, and that for them their options are limited to either live this life or be homeless? Because that's the reality of blue collar work. Let's not pretend it's particularly difficult to find work outside of the startup community. So yeah, privileged.

Yes it's difficult to find work globally. It's hard outside of a big city. It's borderline impossible if you live in the country side.

"Difficult" is a subjective term. One cannot telecommute to a bricklaying or machinist job.

Great for them. They will always have jobs in the vicinity at a fair local salary because they can't be outsourced oversea to the lowest bidder.

I'm sorry you work in a third world country. Advanced societies have working limits of 35 to 40 hours per week.

Im not sure which advanced society you are refering to. But i think you mean 40hrs of mandatory work. I worked at a chainsaw factory ~15yrs ago and in Canada & the managers would put huge amounts of pressure on the workers to do constant overtime. When you are desperate for job security being seen as the worker who won't go the extra mile does not feel optional.

> Im not sure which advanced society you are refering to. But i think you mean 40hrs of mandatory work

Germany or any other civilized country with such things as laborer protection laws. But in a society with at-will employment like the US I wouldn't expect any kind of protection, so...

Yeah.. No.

Having worked for a German company where 7-midnight shifts were a regular thing for month (project team of five): Sure. That's illegal. I know that, knew that then. But maybe you just want to do your job and get over with it. Then there's the fucked up problem between coworkers. Five people. If one says "Enough! I go home now after 12 hours!" then four are "Erm... why do you leave us to finish the tasks?".

Germany (can't comment on other so-called civilized countries) is no help here if the employees feel that they're in a bind.

> Germany (can't comment on other so-called civilized countries) is no help here if the employees feel that they're in a bind.

Yes, but these examples are rare and when you document your working time carefully you can get quite a load of money by going via the court system. In the US, they're widespread and no way for recourse.

Putting too much faith in regulations here.

Private industry always finds a way. And high-supply labour with no job security can't easily say no.

I sometimes wonder if someone has sat down and worked out that stealing from the employees in this way is actually a net positive for the firm or if one asshole just does it naturally and then it sets the rest in motion.

While I agree that forced overtime is a problem. I'm not sure I would call it "stealing", as presumably these are hourly workers who are getting paid time-and-a-half wages for the overtime. At the local margins, it's definitely more efficient for the firm, since the other solution would be to hire more workers to meet peak demand who might then sit idle during lower demand periods. To some extent, common overtime availability can be beneficial to both the worker and the firm, but if the demand is highly consistent throughout the year, it's probably ultimately a net negative for the firm.

>At the local margins, it's definitely more efficient for the firm, since the other solution would be to hire more workers to meet peak demand who might then sit idle during lower demand periods.

There are also times where it's not really a choice. I interned in a town of 1200 which hosted the only traffic light in the county and was 30 minutes away from a city of 30,000. Production was 4 10's, but turned into 5 10's when things were booming, and then an extra 4 hours on Saturday. The only way to guarantee a weekend of was to take a vacation day on Friday.

They had a tough time hiring when it's booming. When the economy is good, good welders are in short supply everywhere (not just small towns). They pay sufficiently for living in the rural Midwest, the only way they can really get the work done is by working the hours.

This is a very interesting anecdote. The wage, QoL, amenities, and therefore labor pool asymmetry between larger cities and smaller towns puts many companies in this bind. Without the ability to attract labor, the situation in small towns becomes more and more dire, while competitors closer to the labor pool do better, can hire more part time workers etc. The cost of housing is pretty much the only mediating factor here, but people's expressed preferences seem to be shifting more and more toward cities. If you develop software it can be pretty trivial to relocate. If you run a steel mill, or a welding plant, the cost of moving (actual equipment, environmental controls, square footage) can make it nearly impossible.

Yep! I work in a heavy industry now and we have original installations of equipment that take 9-12 months typically (after the shell of the building is in place). Once it's installed, it's getting run as much as possible for profits, and contracts for delivering product could very well prevent being able to do a 12 month hold on production while moving.

Some factories are located on rivers because the equipment brought in is many times the max allowable on roadways...there's no other way to get the equipment installed.

That depends on your job

can't you plan for 32hr weeks with more employees/machines? and end up with about 40 hours? or do you like the overtime?

IMHO 54h/week is not sustainable if you are supposed to have a life outside work, if your employer have a pattern of this kind of behaviour you should really look at getting another job. You could easily employ one more on those extra hours (or two more).

This really depends on commute times.

5x 8 hour work day + 1 hour each way commute = 50h/week.

54h/week + 20 minute each way commute = 57.3h/week.

54h/week + 1 hour each way commute = 64h/week.

That said, 56h is half your time awake a week. It does not leave a lot of wiggle room for other commitments.

You seem to be getting downvoted but no one's explaining why: check your math.

At 8 hours a day, plus 1 hour there and 1 hour back, each of your 5 work days would total 10 hours. 5 of those is a 50h work week, not a 60h week:

5d * (8h + 1h + 1h) = 50h/week

I do agree that commute times are important, but they're not quite the heavy hitter that your original example implies.

Edited it a few times, the original version was:

8 hours work + 2x 1h commute + off clock (30 minutes lunch + 2 x 15 minute breaks) = 55 hour week.

5 minute commute + 54 hour/week including lunch = 55 hour week.

But, that seemed a little contrived. I think you saw a poor edit.

Don't forget that 8h workday actually lasts 9h if you count in a lunch break. Sure, you don't work technically, but depending on a situation (which is the case more often than not from my personal experience), this hour still might be crossed out of your life.

That's a great way of looking at it.

My commute, door to door, is 1500 meters, no quite 1 mile. There is very little traffic to speak of, even at the the busiest part of the day.

5*(8+2)=50, still. To get to 60h, one needs to commute 4h every day with 40h weeks.

"And for a fun fact: lubricant used in food production equipment must be safe for humans. For this reason, vegetable oil and similar products are often used."

Good to know, had always wondered about this.

FWIW, peanut/soy oil is a pretty good cutting lubricant on the lathe/mill too. (manual machines, that is). It is slippery and can take relatively high heats. And, when it gets hot it smells nice.

Chris King (the bicycle parts manufacturer) uses only soy oil for their machining operations because it has a lower environmental footprint and can be safely recycled.

You had always wondered about lubricant used in food production equipment? People will always surprise me

It seems that most if not all of these issues have software development process equivalents…

I do some programming (unfortunately mostly VBA, the language of the non-technical business world) and spent 4 years of college working on robots for a competition with a bunch of mechanical engineers and computer engineers. I agree.

I specifically compared software projects here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15197767

And I outlined more manufacturing challenges here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15195869

Yes, proper lubricants are a great issue in software outsourcing companies.

This is a good joke, but if we extract the underlying intent - "things that may leak into being consumed by the user must be nontoxic" - it has a clear parallel in adtech.

Adtech and outsourcing firms have the parallel that they are about capturing money meaninglessly thrown away by other firms.

Kanban boards didn't originate in software development, but super markets and car manufacturing[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban#Toyota%27s_Six_Rules

> Imbalanced production rates. The bottleneck of the factory should be the primary focus for improvements.

This game shows this quite well: www.positech.co.uk/productionline/

An industrial sized tube of KY?

This may be a dumb question, but at what point does a "machine" become a "robot"?

My definition: there is no clear limit, but there is a spectrum of ‘roboticity’ that corresponds to the spectrum of ‘versatility’. The more versatile a machine is, the more a robot it is.

For instance, a blender is not versatile. But a cooking robot can do more things (it blends, but also cooks, mixes, etc.). This is why the cooking robot is more a robot than a blender.

This is similar in industry. You have specialized machines, which can do a single thing. Industrial robots are more versatile because we can program them to achieve different task (e.g. when there is a new model of car). The ultimate robot would be as versatile as a human. This kind of humanoid would have the highest level of ‘roboticity’.

> The more versatile a machine is, the more a robot it is. . . . Industrial robots are more versatile because we can program them to achieve different task (e.g. when there is a new model of car).

Agreed. I actually think movies downplay "robot" arms too much, making them look like dumb graspers/movers when in fact they're incredibly versatile not only mechanically, but also programmatically (for example, being able to specify maximum forces, a center of mass, "up", and have it work with all of these parameters as efficiently as possible).

For example, the Kuka:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcl6n4LOJRM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck8y1sl97BY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxbjZiKAZP4

Why would human versatility define the upper limit?

Great question. I think it stems from the origin of robotics itself. The desire to build a machine that is "alive" and get it to obey at all our commands. Sometimes I think that robots are slaves 2.0, and as such, they will have human traits.

It seems, in practice, that a robot is what we abstractly imagine, but once implemented in the concrete, it's demystified and everybody goes, "Oh that? That's just a machine".

I didn't know that CPUs do branch prediction until Spectre, I'm work in the steel construction industry so my knowledge of the works of CPUs is limited.

Anyway, I immediately though of this concept you've described: Artificial Intelligence is an abstract imagine, once implemented it's just "branch prediction", or some such.

To be fair, I don’t think anyone working in CPUs ever claimed that branch prediction is AI.

As a matter of fact the two do: [0]. It appears now common place to use some kind of machine learning system in a branch predictor. Which some people consider to be AI.

0 - http://www.electronicdesign.com/microprocessors/ai-helps-amd...

When it senses the item being worked on, and adjusts accordingly.

If it always does exactly the same thing, even if triggered, then I would call it a machine.

So you could have a packing machine - each item to pack is always in the same place. Or a packing robot - it looks for the item to pack, and grabs it where it finds it.

There are obviously some machines/robots that fall on the fuzzy line between those. For example if the machine is simply triggered by the arrival of an item to pack, it's kind of borderline.

Basically: Robot = Machine + Sensors

So closed loop control qualifies a machine as a robot? I'd think it also needs some degree of generality, a robot arm can be reprogrammed for different tasks but something like a VSD cannot.

Yup, generality and reprogrammability would be my criterion as well. As for closed loop control, well maybe? Just about everything meant for industry uses servos, so there's a closed loop for positioning, but it won't necessarily know anything about the work itself.

What's a VSD in this case? Variable Speed Drive?

Yeah, sorry - VSD = variable speed drive. They often have a built-in PID controller which takes an analog input and controls the motor speed accordingly, so for example you can run drive a pump at the required speed to produce a required flow rate.

Yes, I'd say that a the essence of a robot is that it uses sensors to adjust its output actuators to achieve a goal.

The bread and butter of the industrial robotics industry is SCARA machines for pick 'n place. These commonly don't have any sensors beyond a few rotary encoders and motor feedback. They're just moving between preprogrammed points. It's hard to make a simple definition that includes everything.

"These commonly don't have any sensors beyond a few rotary encoders and motor feedback."

you contradicted your own point. Those are sensors. Without them the P&P wouldn't be able to do its job.

I could take the encoders out and the robot would work fine. Its position would just grow increasingly inaccurate over time and make the production line more fragile. It would also make writing the pick n place code a bit of a pain for several reasons, but they're not fundamental to the design.

I mean... the robot would decidedly not work fine without joint encoders, on any timescale relevant to the task. You likely could not accomplish one pick/place operation. You need the position feedback because you don't have a good enough model of the motors (and everything) to do feedforward control alone. So I'd say position feedback is pretty fundamental to the design. (If you have stepper motors, then okay, you do have a good enough model of the motors.)

I think I agree with your point at large, though, that the "proprioceptive" sensors of the robot don't have anything to do with the environment the robot is in, or the task at hand.

But now what about an air conditioner with a thermostat? That's got a sensor and an actuator and the sensor in this case really is fundamental to the task at hand.

a thermostat, under my definition would indeed be a robot- although a fairly boring one since it doesn't move itself, just modulate room temperature.

A toilet cistern would also qualify. (And in fact, while I wouldn't deem it a robot, I often use this as the simplest possible control system example.)

nope, encoders are definitely fundamental. You cannot give a DC (brushed or not) motor voltage and have it turn a fixed distance. The closest thing is steppers, but once they stall, you've lost feedback and positioning information.

Here’s an entire podcast of short episodes that started out dedicated to this question. They’re now branched out to answering questions about definitions in general.

https://www.theincomparable.com/robot/

When does a group of grains turn into a heap?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

People can list any number of things: reactive behaviour, complexity of tasks, programmability, autonomy, anthropomorphic design (in part or whole). But really, whether we call it a robot or a generic machine depends on which probabilistic impulses any given instance trigger on the average person using the language. The criteria differ from person to person, the activation levels differ too, and the probability distribution can change over time also. The word is a cultural artifact and has no real meaning other than its relations with concepts in people's brains. Unlike, say, the word "two": that has very precise meaning independent of cultural concepts.

I think the real definition, which the author explicitly denies is "roughly human shaped". I assume that's why they referred to "arms" and "seeing" in an attempt to make their machines more robotic.

As a fan of the "How It's Made" show, I'm fascinated by the systems in factories, which could be thought of as large machines themselves, even if some of the cogs are human beings doing repetitive tasks.

Apparently though, people don't care about jobs being "stolen" by fork lift trucks or giant ovens but human shaped robots let your job get taken without even the smallest amount of rijigging and that makes the threat very real for some people.

When it senses and responds to an unstructured environment, such as autonomous cars. If you can drop the device into an unstructured environment and it will be able to do something useful, it's a robot. If it operates in a fixed, defined environment, particularly if it's repetitious, it's automation. I'd guess the cheese robot is actually automation, by my definition.

I use a very simple definition. All robots are machines, but not all machines are robots. A robot is an autonomous mechanical worker. That is, barring exceptional circumstances (e.g. less than 16 strings of cheese), something goes in the input and gets transformed in some good at the output without human intervention. A machine that replaces human labour.

> A machine that replaces human labour.

We also need a word for a human that replaces machine labour. E.g. in the case of downtime, or when there is no funding to buy one.

Perhaps "Mechanical Turk" would be that word. So that would mean that "robot" can be defined as its opposite.

I think enterprise / business terminology is heading towards "robot" is what replaces a person doing an existing job (which is why i am surprised to find the moral equivalent of perl scripts being called robots when reporting at board level) and what we might more commonly call AI is for as yet untried opportunities.

but that might just be a limited pov

I'd say a machine is a robot if, and only if, it demonstrates autonomy and mobility (either by locomotion of the whole apparatus, or by motion of a member thereof).

Mobility is a classifier that helps distinguish robots from computers. Autonomy differentiates robots from piloted vehicles.

Autonomy does not require inference, reasoning, or behavior choice.

I'd say a robot is "a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer."

uhm, that would include a cnc lathe

So? Some of the high end ones, especially the one with arms for automated tool switching and stuff, I would definitely call robots.

A fully automated CNC lathe with feedback is a robot.

Which replaced jigs, which replaced master machinists.

Master machinists weren’t replaced, they learned how to write G code. The underlying fundemental knowledge is still extremely valuable.

For me personally (I'm a hobbyist roboticist), when you put in sensors and use those for a closed control feedback loop to achieve an objective.

Perhaps when it can carry out programmable tasks.

I worked in a cheese factory and I am familiar with all the tasks here, except we also churned the whey to get very salty butter which went into other products.

We used pallets and when you would have a small tower built on these things you would have to do the clingfilm wrap to hold it all together. This was not a big process, it would take a couple of minutes to do and a forklift would need to access the pallet to take it away as soon as this was done.

In this factory we made cheese on a truly industrial scale, however, the thought of getting a robot to do the clingfilm wrap would be anything but the first thing on the mind of the boss. So this cheese factory must be gigantic, up there with the gigafactory...

So is this any good, this string cheese in packs from this vast industrial operation? Is there some conclusion to this where America ends up with just one mega-dairy factory somewhere in the Mid-West with nobody else able to compete against the robots? For things like clingfilm wrapping to be too hard for humans to do?

I would like to see a different approach, a highly robotised but small scale cheese factory, on the back of a lorry. Something that can be taken to the farm so that we can have 'single farm' cheeses.

On this last point, I think the trend of small(er) scale fabrication at lower cost will eventually enable such micro-factories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fab_lab

I had a tour of an incandescent light bulb factory in the 90’s. It was interesting seeing machines that were possibly 100 years old retrofitted with the latest programmable controllers.

This is a very accessible intro. And I was fascinated by the progression of her interests and education.

One note: the link to her Instagram page at the bottom of the article is broken (there's an unneeded = at the end). The correct URL is:

https://www.instagram.com/theladymachinist/

Anyone have recommendations for an online mechatronics course/certification?

Not online, but I think a lot of community colleges will have programs in automation and PLCs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com