[arcbyte]

Manufacturing robotics is all about movement. All movement exists on a spectrum of difficulty and context needed to perform. For instance, welding the steel plates together in an empty and repeatable consistent 3d space is now on the lower end of difficulty. Navigating through a partially manufactured vehicle cab to install a complicated dash assembly requires a lot of context and is incredibly difficult for a robot to do.

The more we can bring down all the difficulty of all these processes, the more we can accelerate manufacturing locally.

[cvz]

That's at odds with everything I know about manufacturing robotics, having worked with people doing that work. The complexity of the environment is irrelevant because the robot is programmed to make a specific motion and to adjust that motion in predictable ways based on the appearance of specific features. That is by design, not because (or at least not just because) the robot is incapable of planning its own motion. The whole system is designed to be predictable instead of adaptable because that's what you need to do to do the same thing millions of times.

[bluGill]

> The whole system is designed to be predictable instead of adaptable because that's what you need to do to do the same thing millions of times.

That final "millions" is the problem. Automation is great and easy when you will do the same thing millions of times. Sure it might cost half a million to program the robot (which itself cost half a million) - but that is $1.00 per part, and it goes down as you make more. When you are only building 10 though a million dollars is a lot of money and so you want humans - or robots that are "CAPABLE of plannings its own motion".

Costs have been going down. In high school I took the class on how to write g-code (I have one free period so I took shop for non-college bound kids for fun even though I was college bound - it was a great time that I highly recommend even though it was only for fun). These days almost everyone just uses their CAD/CAM and isn't even aware that the g-code is supposed to be a human readable programming language. (it probably isn't)

[crote]

> Navigating through a partially manufactured vehicle cab to install a complicated dash assembly requires a lot of context and is incredibly difficult for a robot to do.

Not really. The robots are programmed by having a human manually guide it, so the robot itself doesn't really have to do any navigation - it just has to follow a predefined path.

Want to install different variants of dash components? Split it up into methods and have the robot return to a neutral position after each method. You're literally programming it.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

And yet China already has 100% automated vehicle production lines.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/10/12/why-western-...