[vablings]

>But they are not built and maintained autonomously by the all mighty benevolent skynet, all working 100% on renewable energies abundant at geological scale.

No but they are significantly cheaper than an employee, A robot can pick up something and move it from A to B for upwards of 10 years. The programming and setup are a fraction of the time a robot can operate reliably

I cannot stress to you how reliable and little maintenance is required for a $60,000 fanuc robot.

[inigyou]

A factory isn't made of workers who pick up something and move it from A to B all day.

[BobaFloutist]

Frankly, that doesn't need a robot, it needs a concert belt, maybe a hopper.

[vablings]

Robots are great for this kind of work because they require little engineering work and modifications to the base machine. There are now many old manual machines used for various machining operations that can be completely robot tended with a palette.

You don't even need manufacturer support or access to the PLC. You want to start the machine? Just have the 6axis robot hit the start button lol