Honest question: how do they count robots ?
I mean, where does one end and the other one start... unless we are talking about humanoid robots of course.
Top countries by robot density (Graph)
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Re: Top countries by robot density (Graph)
#22It's interesting that Europe, with its (in-)famously stricter labor laws, has a higher robot ratio than the US. I would have thought that companies in the US would be able to fire workers much more easily to replace them with robots, and yet this doesn't appear to be the case.
Many of the manufacturing jobs in the US are unionized. The unions can make it more difficult to fire people.
Re: Top countries by robot density (Graph)
#23why america sucks when it comes to robots?
Robots are only useful in certain industries, and these industries don't dominate US manufacturing the way they do in the robot-heavy countries.
For instance, cars are built largely by robots, but aeroplanes largely aren't. Japan builds a lot of cars and no(?) aeroplanes, while the US builds a lot of cars and a lot of aeroplanes.
Re: Top countries by robot density (Graph)
#24I can't wait for the Creepy Robot Armageddon. I'm tracking the situation at http://creepyrobots.tumblr.com/
Re: Top countries by robot density (Graph)
#25Honest question: how do they count robots ? I mean, where does one end and the other one start... unless we are talking about humanoid robots of course.
Since they put the numbers in relation to manufacturing workers they surly only count robots used for manufacturing, not Roombas.
But then the problems start: Say you have two robot arms, one to hold a part up, the other to weld, are those two arms two robots or one? Is a CNC machine a robot? And so on.
Those differences don’t matter so much if they managed to get their definition of robot somewhat right (the amount of CNC machines is probably highly correlated with the number of [other?] robots, so it doesn’t really matter whether CNC machines are included or not) and if they counted consistently. You probably shouldn’t read too much into the worker:robot ratio. (Oh look, all Japan needs is a 35-fold increase in the number of robots, then they won’t need any workers anymore …)
Re: Top countries by robot density (Graph)
#26why america sucks when it comes to robots?
Robots are used for manufacturing. The US hasn't been doing a whole lot of manufacturing recently, so it has less use for robots.
The US is still the world's largest manufacturer, by a hair:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_country_has_the_largest_manuf...
Re: Top countries by robot density (Graph)
#27Italy's surprisingly high on that list, if you think about the stereotype of the country. If you know the reality, that there are a lot of interesting things going on in industry here, the numbers make sense.
Re: Top countries by robot density (Graph)
#28Italy's surprisingly high on that list, if you think about the stereotype of the country. If you know the reality, that there are a lot of interesting things going on in industry here, the numbers make sense.
Italy's economy is roughly the same size as California's - hardly a third world country.
A lot of very desirable things are manufactured in Italy :-)
Re: Top countries by robot density (Graph)
#29It's interesting that Europe, with its (in-)famously stricter labor laws, has a higher robot ratio than the US. I would have thought that companies in the US would be able to fire workers much more easily to replace them with robots, and yet this doesn't appear to be the case.
Many of the manufacturing jobs in the US are unionized. The unions can make it more difficult to fire people.
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