4 ms·

I feel like this is always missing. Robots don't scale down, which is a real issue.

contingencies 10y ago
They kind of can - you can lower the duty cycle and batchify things. You can also outsource to them, and/or otherwise share them with other producers/production lines. I personally believe future manufacturing will be significantly more dynamic with respect to assembling/disassembling production line unit operations via electronic contract (re-)negotiation. At http://8-food.com/ http://8-food.com/ we are essentially placing miniature (fresh food preparation) factories in retail spaces, and so I've been reading a lot of industry literature recently. I've found very interesting crossovers with former work on a major Bitcoin exchange - eg. multi-asset/service/settlement path capable transaction markup and negotiation systems - http://ifex-project.org/ http://ifex-project.org/ In the same way factories use JIT (just in time) concepts to optimize inventory and supply-chain logistics, we similarly optimize for delivery of ingredients and packaging, and thus reduce storage bulk overheads and achieve form-factor minimization. Operations research truly is operations generic, and quaintly fascinating coming from a programming background.
- ChefDenominator 10y ago
  You can do anything with unlimited funds, the existence of such technologies or the dream of such technologies doesn't really mean anything. The comparison should be against alternatives. Human labor is still far more scalable than any technology can provide. The reason the tech industry so strongly supports minimum wages and other increases in cost to labor is because it makes their products more competitive against humans.
  - contingencies 10y ago
    A fair point, though I think it's fair to say that due to the very nature of HN and startups a lot of people here choose think in the 'what is just around the corner' and 'what is coming' domains, shunning obstinate currency (perhaps subconsciously as done/uninteresting/unchallenging).

They kind of can - you can lower the duty cycle and batchify things. You can also outsource to them, and/or otherwise share them with other producers/production lines. I personally believe future manufacturing will be significantly more dynamic with respect to assembling/disassembling production line unit operations via electronic contract (re-)negotiation. At http://8-food.com/ http://8-food.com/ we are essentially placing miniature (fresh food preparation) factories in retail spaces, and so I've been reading a lot of industry literature recently. I've found very interesting crossovers with former work on a major Bitcoin exchange - eg. multi-asset/service/settlement path capable transaction markup and negotiation systems - http://ifex-project.org/ http://ifex-project.org/ In the same way factories use JIT (just in time) concepts to optimize inventory and supply-chain logistics, we similarly optimize for delivery of ingredients and packaging, and thus reduce storage bulk overheads and achieve form-factor minimization. Operations research truly is operations generic, and quaintly fascinating coming from a programming background.

ChefDenominator 10y ago
You can do anything with unlimited funds, the existence of such technologies or the dream of such technologies doesn't really mean anything. The comparison should be against alternatives. Human labor is still far more scalable than any technology can provide. The reason the tech industry so strongly supports minimum wages and other increases in cost to labor is because it makes their products more competitive against humans.
- contingencies 10y ago
  A fair point, though I think it's fair to say that due to the very nature of HN and startups a lot of people here choose think in the 'what is just around the corner' and 'what is coming' domains, shunning obstinate currency (perhaps subconsciously as done/uninteresting/unchallenging).