Word: robots
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There is a measure of irony in the robot industry's plight. Although industrial robots account for only 2% of the $24 billion factory-automation business (such items as computers and other electronically controlled industrial machinery make up much of the rest), the mechanical menials have drastically altered many sectors of the American workplace. Robots perform more than 98% of the spot welding on Ford's highly successful Taurus and Sable cars. At Doehler-Jarvis, a major Ohio metal fabricator, robots load and unload die-casting machines, trim parts and ladle molten metal. At IBM factories across the country, robots...
Another area of vulnerability for U.S. manufacturers was the hydraulic- robot technology pioneered by Unimation. The company's robots, which became the American industry standard, were large (up to 4,000 lbs.), powerful, multipurpose and expensive, ranging in price from $30,000 to $200,000 apiece. But these bulky hydraulic machines, originally programmed to perform tasks by means of magnetic tape similar to that used in tape recorders, were often inaccurate and susceptible to breakdowns. Says Raj Reddy, director of the Robotics Institute at Pittsburgh's Carnegie-Mellon University: "U.S. companies dragged their feet on innovation because they wanted...
Even as U.S. robotmakers wallowed in their early success, the Japanese, who imported their first hydraulic robot in 1967, were coming up with a new product. Fitted with high-speed computer chips and sophisticated circuitry, the new electric machines received instructions via computer-software programs. The machines tended to be smaller, less expensive ($5,000 to $40,000 each) and not as prone to breakdowns as their U.S. hydraulic counterparts. - Though electric robots were less powerful, and thus less capable of heavy industrial tasks, their greater accuracy in tasks such as delicate manipulation and precision welding made them more attractive...
...showpiece of the operation was the Navy's Deep Drone, a sophisticated undersea robot. The drone was connected to the U.S. Navy tug Apache by an umbilical cord that transmitted commands and returned data from an array of cameras and sensors to shipboard computers and monitors. An acoustical locating system, accurate to within 20 in., will guide scientists in assembling a photomosaic of the more than 2,000 high-resolution still photographs the drone has taken of the ship's hull. In addition, a sonar scan will be used to make a false-color three-dimensional computer...
...gambit is brilliant, for surely a robot would feel exactly what a human two-year-old feels as he sets forth on the exploration of his strange newfound world. Malkovich gives a wonderful performance where we do not expect one, and it makes the rest of the film problematic. On one hand, it grants the picture a distinction it would not otherwise enjoy. On the other hand, it is a continual reminder of just how routine the rest of the movie is. In effect, his performance, together with Seidelman's former success, creates an expectation of sustained comic brilliance that...