19 ms·

Robots Rule at Swiss Factories as Strong Franc and Wages Bite

187 points by geodel 10y ago

Quequau 10y ago
Or you know, the costs have fallen and the flexibility & capability automation has improved.
- mjn 10y ago
  Yeah, articles that focus on wages as the primary driving force (or here, wages plus currency movements) are missing the main picture. Changes in wages do make a difference at the margins, but only the margins: a 15% wage change in one direction or another simply speeds up or slows down the schedule of automation being rolled out, but it doesn't make previously completely infeasible things feasible. Tech developments, on the other hand, can produce order-of-magnitude improvements in costs and capabilities, which swamps these smaller currency/wage movements in terms of making things feasible and economical to automate.
geodel 10y ago
Sometime back there was an account of how good is work-life balance in Switzerland. Now it seems Swiss will also face economic forces which spared none.
- surfmike 10y ago
  This jist of this article is that companies need robots for manufacturing _because_ the Swiss have it so great in their non-manufacturing jobs. Having low unemployment, high wages, and a strong currency is an enviable situation for a country. edit: P.S. For the record, they currently have a 3.5% unemployment rate.
  - pif 10y ago
    > Having low unemployment, high wages, and a strong currency is an enviable situation for a country. Concerning the strong currency, Swiss National Bank disagrees with you :-) They tried to buy as many euros as possible in order to keep Swiss franc from getting too strong, until they gave up. Ant then Swiss export started to suffer a lot more!
    - tonfa 10y ago
      > until they gave up Wasn't it mostly due to EUR losing ground against USD (due to QE?)? (at which point it didn't make as much sense pegging the currency only against EUR, I wonder why they didn't peg against a mix of currencies). In any case the SNB doesn't seem too concerned now, at least there's no peg anymore.
planetjones 10y ago
It is no surprise to see many Swiss vocally supporting the 'Grundeinkommen' - which is a basic income for everyone. In the age of corporate greed (move the jobs to cheaper locations) and automation (bring in the robots) Switzerland, like every country, will have to ask itself 'what do humans do'. The basic income is the solution in my opinion. Let all citizens live to a basic level, but not too good a level that the incentive to innovate or do more is gone. The basic income will, in my opinion, lead to a more entrepreneurial society where risk takers are supported - and also a more socially responsible and caring society, where people can donate their time to help others.
- rumcajz 10y ago
  The interesting part is that in CH, unlike in other democracies, if people will vote for it, it will be implemented. In the last referendum about UBI the proposal had ~23% support. And if the automation advances, that number may raise quickly.
  - folli 10y ago
    Could you really call it a democracy otherwise?
    - tallowen 10y ago
      Switzerland has a much more direct democracy than most (all?) other democracies. This means citizens often vote on things similar to ballot initiatives in the US. In the context of basic income it means such a populist policy would be have different political barriers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland
      - pif 10y ago
        > Switzerland has a much more direct democracy than most (all?) other democracies. Just for the record, that's not as wonderful as it may seem at a first look. Direct democracy has shown its limits some times during the last year. The fundamental issues being that you can only vote yes or no for a fixed text, while a law is usually supposed to be discussed in a parliament in every detail until an agreement can be found.
nkrisc 10y ago
Humans can do lots of things robots can't currently do: they can create thoughtful art, write meaningful stories and journalism. They can take care of and raise children. They can easily tailor instruction to individuals, and more. What do all these roles have in common? They aren't usually valued very highly by society. It seems a lot of people want to work the jobs the robots are good at and not do the ones humans are best at.
- thenomad 10y ago
  What do all these roles have in common? They aren't usually valued very highly by society. Artistic work is valued very highly by society. J.K. Rowling is a billionaire. Notch, creator of Minecraft, likewise. George Lucas is a billionaire 5x over. It seems a lot of people want to work the jobs the robots are good at and not do the ones humans are best at. A very large number of people desperately want to do artistic work, enough to keep doing it on less than minimum wage and/or in terrible working conditions for decades or their entire lives. The problem is not that artistic work, per se, isn't valued. The problem is that artistic jobs in the 21st century suffer from a truly vicious power law curve, and a comparatively small number of people can create most of the art and storytelling most people will consume, and thus reap most of the rewards.
  - aioprisan 10y ago
    You're picking a few massively successful people out of billions that have come and gone. You could argue the same about any industry by cherry-picking a few successes while the mean comp is much lower, which actually shows that as a society we actually do not value those things very highly.
    - thenomad 10y ago
      My point is that some artistic work is valued extremely highly. The issue with saying "we'd like everyone who wants to be an artist to be able to make a living at it!" is that thanks to easy duplication, a very few winners take almost the entire pot. That's radically different to most other industries, and so requires different solutions.
brightball 10y ago
Robots work really well for manufacturing. What they don't work well for is repairs. IMO, the natural progression that combats the impact of robots is to transition from a "buy a new one" society to a "fix the old one" society. There's an entire service industry there that mitigates waste, is better for the environment, is entirely localized and isn't realistically ever going to fit the "make the robot do it" line of work. 3D printers should make this even easier. The only thing that makes the current approach work is people not feeling the cost of waste disposal due to free trash pickup. As soon as disposal's real costs are actually attached to it you'll begin to shift people's mindsets to products that are built to last instead of built to replace. Investing in a purchase that's harder to repair than replace is one of the reasons for a lot of the issues that we experience in society today. EDIT: Apparently many European countries charge $2/lb for trash pickup but recycling is free, just as an example on that note. http://www.wisebread.com/should-we-pay-2-per-pound-for-garbage-disposal http://www.wisebread.com/should-we-pay-2-per-pound-for-garba... http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/recycling.html http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/recycling.html
- zeveb 10y ago
  > IMO, the natural progression that combats the impact of robots is to transition from a "buy a new one" society to a "fix the old one" society. The thing is, it's probably cheaper to buy a new robot-produced item than to pay a human being to repair the old one (particularly if one can hand the broken old item to a robot recycler).
  - PeterisP 10y ago
    It doesn't even need robots to get there - right now for many items it's cheaper to have a new item manufactured in China and shipped here than repairing it locally; and there are companies who "do repairs" by having local people simply hand out a replacement and ship the original item back to China for repairs or refurbishment.
- mtgx 10y ago
  That requires pressuring manufacturers (whether legally or otherwise) to make their products more modular and standardized and less integrated and proprietary. For instance, Apple's latest Macbooks get a 1/10 repairability score [1], when years ago it used to be higher. Now Apple is even fighting against legislation that would require it to make iPhones easier to repair [2]. This is not a clear-cut issue, though. I'm sure such regulations will impede innovation to some degree (less thinner devices, potentially lower battery life, etc). But as you said, we as a society need to decide on that compromise. [1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown/39841 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown... [2] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/source-apple-will-fight-right-to-repair-legislation https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/source-apple-will...
csours 10y ago
> “We ask ourselves ‘can we avoid this process altogether?’ When not, we ask ‘can we fully automate it?’ This is what we try to do,” Lindner told a conference in Zurich in November. “We are really trying to automate not just our production sites but also our back office.” - Ricola CFO
kogus 10y ago
I read this as "human employees are hard to find, and really expensive, so we automated". Which I think also means "unemployment is low and wages are high". So.. this is a good thing?
- gohbgl 10y ago
  Yes, it's a good thing. The Swiss are among the wealthiest people in the world because of their high productivity. But "robots take our jobs" makes for a nice headline.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
delegate 10y ago
Robots everywhere are a good thing (tm). Why hire people when you can cut costs by 100x and deliver more stuff of higher build quality ? However nobody except the owners benefit from automation (savings are profits), while slowly generating a huge unemployment problem outside the factory walls. The governments or companies themselves should quickly step in - not just through some sort of universal income, but through making automation public. In other words, robot schematics and software should become public and open source and companies should be highly encouraged (tax benefits etc) to open source all their software and build schematics.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  sorry but implying this is all done in bad faith is ridiculous. unless you just the only producer of a widget your profits are dictated by how well your market your product, how good your product is, and how your pricing compares. robotics reduces your costs after the initial investment is accounted for. prices do drop or remain steady, rarely do prices go up and much of that can be accounted for in increased regulation or embedded taxes the only winners when government takes over an industry are politicians and those they choose to administer the industry.
  - delegate 10y ago
    > government takes over an industry The coloured glasses that everyone wears these days is costing me karma... to hell with it. Please re-read my post. Open sourcing robot schematics and software has nothing to do with government taking over. It means that hackers everywhere will be able to study and improve said robots and maybe build a version of the factory in some poor place on the other side of the world or maybe on another planet. As far as finding the capital, building the things and running them - that's the responsibility of whoever wants to assume that risk, as always.
    - meanduck 10y ago
      Though this part does suggest some govt strong arming. > be highly encouraged (tax benefits etc) Also note that many (including me) believe that taxes are already non-consensual and extortion by Govts.
runeks 10y ago
No wonder robots rule in Swiss factories when corporations can issue bonds at negative interest rates. When the rate of interest is 7%, paying wages or a salary can be significantly cheaper than buying expensive equipment, because of compound interest. A 10-year bond at 7% interest is 40% more expensive than one at zero percent. The Swiss central bank is creating an environment where corporations have no choice but to automate - it's simply too expensive not to. If they don't do it, their competitors will.
sschueller 10y ago
This is not a surprise, Switzerland also makes a lot of precision robots used in manufacturing. ABB is probably the largest in Switzerland.
joe_the_user 10y ago
The chart of job growth in manufacture shows a series of dips and rises ending with a small dip in 2015 [1]. Call me skeptical but I can't see this supporting the claim that automation is reducing manufacturing employment in Switzerland - especially if the world financial climate is bad, this small dip could even represent postponed hiring. And the big thing is automation is not something that appeared in 2015 - in a factory setting, people have been trying to apply it forever. The simpler description would be "due to extremely high currency, some swiss factories close - and automation continues as usual". Maybe automation is ultimately going to eat all jobs. The claim that automated jobs inherently generate more jobs is another unsupported "received idea" imo. That said, a steady-state scenario would be where each year, a factory is automated more, maintains the same workforce and produces more and better stuff, and the world consumes that larger amount until the whole world has all the stuff they need. That doesn't look like where things are headed but it isn't obviously impossible even if the policies of Trump don't seem like well-thought-out approaches for bringing them about. [1] https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/idKGEW3NsEyI/v2/800x-1.png https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/idKGEW3NsEy... - same article
skookumchuck 10y ago
I prefer to repair rather than replace, but sometimes you get really punished for it. Try to replace the heating element in a dryer, or the circuit board in a furnace. The costs are so high you might as well replace the whole thing. On the other end, my car is designed to make it easy to replace components, and they're cheap, too.
chrismealy 10y ago
Full employment and high wages drive technological progress. When labor is abundant there's little incentive to invest in technology.
Havoc 10y ago
The whole robot revolution thing only sunk in for me when my dad (owner of elec co) mentioned that they got a contract for installing lighting in a factor that is on a timer. Turns out they need the lights off 6 days a week (robots) and 1 day on (humans doing maintenance on robots). That whole concept of they don't even bother lighting it really hit home in terms of yeah really no humans anymore.
- dan_quixote 10y ago
  It's literally referred to 'lights-out manufacturing' in the automation industry.
Animats 10y ago
There's a business opportunity here in the US. It's now clear that the current administration intends to deport every illegal immigrant they can identify. This will reduce the pool of cheap labor in specific industries. That creates an opportunity for automation. - Fruit picking for difficult crops. Abundant Robots has a good demo system. What they don't have is a technology ready to be deployed. This is an area in which YC could be active. To finance rapid deployment, FSA loans [1] could be used. - Floor care. This should have been automated by now. The Roomba and its friends just aren't good enough at cleaning. What the world needs is a good $3000 industrial strength floor cleaning robot. The technology exists [2] but is too bulky. Here's the Swiss version.[3] And the advanced R&D version, which is not practical yet.[4] This technology is here, almost. Commercial cleaning needs to become one well-paid person and a crew of robots. This is within reach, and now there's an incentive. - Lawn care. "Mow, blow, and go" should have been automated by now. - Commercial dishwashing. Pre-inspection, sorting, vision-guided aiming of pressure wash jets, and post-inspection is needed. A robot at the Baxter level should be able to do this. [1] https://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=GRANTS_LOANS https://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=GRANTS_L... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngDiT6_FA3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngDiT6_FA3A [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtS9oAhEg9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtS9oAhEg9A [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzznru0BDzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzznru0BDzk

187 points by geodel 10y ago

Quequau 10y ago

Or you know, the costs have fallen and the flexibility & capability automation has improved.

mjn 10y ago
Yeah, articles that focus on wages as the primary driving force (or here, wages plus currency movements) are missing the main picture. Changes in wages do make a difference at the margins, but only the margins: a 15% wage change in one direction or another simply speeds up or slows down the schedule of automation being rolled out, but it doesn't make previously completely infeasible things feasible. Tech developments, on the other hand, can produce order-of-magnitude improvements in costs and capabilities, which swamps these smaller currency/wage movements in terms of making things feasible and economical to automate.

geodel 10y ago

Sometime back there was an account of how good is work-life balance in Switzerland. Now it seems Swiss will also face economic forces which spared none.

surfmike 10y ago
This jist of this article is that companies need robots for manufacturing _because_ the Swiss have it so great in their non-manufacturing jobs. Having low unemployment, high wages, and a strong currency is an enviable situation for a country. edit: P.S. For the record, they currently have a 3.5% unemployment rate.
- pif 10y ago
  > Having low unemployment, high wages, and a strong currency is an enviable situation for a country. Concerning the strong currency, Swiss National Bank disagrees with you :-) They tried to buy as many euros as possible in order to keep Swiss franc from getting too strong, until they gave up. Ant then Swiss export started to suffer a lot more!
  - tonfa 10y ago
    > until they gave up Wasn't it mostly due to EUR losing ground against USD (due to QE?)? (at which point it didn't make as much sense pegging the currency only against EUR, I wonder why they didn't peg against a mix of currencies). In any case the SNB doesn't seem too concerned now, at least there's no peg anymore.

planetjones 10y ago

It is no surprise to see many Swiss vocally supporting the 'Grundeinkommen' - which is a basic income for everyone. In the age of corporate greed (move the jobs to cheaper locations) and automation (bring in the robots) Switzerland, like every country, will have to ask itself 'what do humans do'. The basic income is the solution in my opinion. Let all citizens live to a basic level, but not too good a level that the incentive to innovate or do more is gone. The basic income will, in my opinion, lead to a more entrepreneurial society where risk takers are supported - and also a more socially responsible and caring society, where people can donate their time to help others.

rumcajz 10y ago
The interesting part is that in CH, unlike in other democracies, if people will vote for it, it will be implemented. In the last referendum about UBI the proposal had ~23% support. And if the automation advances, that number may raise quickly.
- folli 10y ago
  Could you really call it a democracy otherwise?
  - tallowen 10y ago
    Switzerland has a much more direct democracy than most (all?) other democracies. This means citizens often vote on things similar to ballot initiatives in the US. In the context of basic income it means such a populist policy would be have different political barriers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland
    - pif 10y ago
      > Switzerland has a much more direct democracy than most (all?) other democracies. Just for the record, that's not as wonderful as it may seem at a first look. Direct democracy has shown its limits some times during the last year. The fundamental issues being that you can only vote yes or no for a fixed text, while a law is usually supposed to be discussed in a parliament in every detail until an agreement can be found.

nkrisc 10y ago

Humans can do lots of things robots can't currently do: they can create thoughtful art, write meaningful stories and journalism. They can take care of and raise children. They can easily tailor instruction to individuals, and more. What do all these roles have in common? They aren't usually valued very highly by society. It seems a lot of people want to work the jobs the robots are good at and not do the ones humans are best at.

thenomad 10y ago
What do all these roles have in common? They aren't usually valued very highly by society. Artistic work is valued very highly by society. J.K. Rowling is a billionaire. Notch, creator of Minecraft, likewise. George Lucas is a billionaire 5x over. It seems a lot of people want to work the jobs the robots are good at and not do the ones humans are best at. A very large number of people desperately want to do artistic work, enough to keep doing it on less than minimum wage and/or in terrible working conditions for decades or their entire lives. The problem is not that artistic work, per se, isn't valued. The problem is that artistic jobs in the 21st century suffer from a truly vicious power law curve, and a comparatively small number of people can create most of the art and storytelling most people will consume, and thus reap most of the rewards.
- aioprisan 10y ago
  You're picking a few massively successful people out of billions that have come and gone. You could argue the same about any industry by cherry-picking a few successes while the mean comp is much lower, which actually shows that as a society we actually do not value those things very highly.
  - thenomad 10y ago
    My point is that some artistic work is valued extremely highly. The issue with saying "we'd like everyone who wants to be an artist to be able to make a living at it!" is that thanks to easy duplication, a very few winners take almost the entire pot. That's radically different to most other industries, and so requires different solutions.

brightball 10y ago

Robots work really well for manufacturing. What they don't work well for is repairs. IMO, the natural progression that combats the impact of robots is to transition from a "buy a new one" society to a "fix the old one" society. There's an entire service industry there that mitigates waste, is better for the environment, is entirely localized and isn't realistically ever going to fit the "make the robot do it" line of work. 3D printers should make this even easier. The only thing that makes the current approach work is people not feeling the cost of waste disposal due to free trash pickup. As soon as disposal's real costs are actually attached to it you'll begin to shift people's mindsets to products that are built to last instead of built to replace. Investing in a purchase that's harder to repair than replace is one of the reasons for a lot of the issues that we experience in society today. EDIT: Apparently many European countries charge $2/lb for trash pickup but recycling is free, just as an example on that note. http://www.wisebread.com/should-we-pay-2-per-pound-for-garbage-disposal http://www.wisebread.com/should-we-pay-2-per-pound-for-garba... http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/recycling.html http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/recycling.html

zeveb 10y ago
> IMO, the natural progression that combats the impact of robots is to transition from a "buy a new one" society to a "fix the old one" society. The thing is, it's probably cheaper to buy a new robot-produced item than to pay a human being to repair the old one (particularly if one can hand the broken old item to a robot recycler).
- PeterisP 10y ago
  It doesn't even need robots to get there - right now for many items it's cheaper to have a new item manufactured in China and shipped here than repairing it locally; and there are companies who "do repairs" by having local people simply hand out a replacement and ship the original item back to China for repairs or refurbishment.
mtgx 10y ago
That requires pressuring manufacturers (whether legally or otherwise) to make their products more modular and standardized and less integrated and proprietary. For instance, Apple's latest Macbooks get a 1/10 repairability score [1], when years ago it used to be higher. Now Apple is even fighting against legislation that would require it to make iPhones easier to repair [2]. This is not a clear-cut issue, though. I'm sure such regulations will impede innovation to some degree (less thinner devices, potentially lower battery life, etc). But as you said, we as a society need to decide on that compromise. [1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown/39841 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown... [2] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/source-apple-will-fight-right-to-repair-legislation https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/source-apple-will...

csours 10y ago

> “We ask ourselves ‘can we avoid this process altogether?’ When not, we ask ‘can we fully automate it?’ This is what we try to do,” Lindner told a conference in Zurich in November. “We are really trying to automate not just our production sites but also our back office.” - Ricola CFO

kogus 10y ago

I read this as "human employees are hard to find, and really expensive, so we automated". Which I think also means "unemployment is low and wages are high". So.. this is a good thing?

gohbgl 10y ago
Yes, it's a good thing. The Swiss are among the wealthiest people in the world because of their high productivity. But "robots take our jobs" makes for a nice headline.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

delegate 10y ago

Robots everywhere are a good thing (tm). Why hire people when you can cut costs by 100x and deliver more stuff of higher build quality ? However nobody except the owners benefit from automation (savings are profits), while slowly generating a huge unemployment problem outside the factory walls. The governments or companies themselves should quickly step in - not just through some sort of universal income, but through making automation public. In other words, robot schematics and software should become public and open source and companies should be highly encouraged (tax benefits etc) to open source all their software and build schematics.

Shivetya 10y ago
sorry but implying this is all done in bad faith is ridiculous. unless you just the only producer of a widget your profits are dictated by how well your market your product, how good your product is, and how your pricing compares. robotics reduces your costs after the initial investment is accounted for. prices do drop or remain steady, rarely do prices go up and much of that can be accounted for in increased regulation or embedded taxes the only winners when government takes over an industry are politicians and those they choose to administer the industry.
- delegate 10y ago
  > government takes over an industry The coloured glasses that everyone wears these days is costing me karma... to hell with it. Please re-read my post. Open sourcing robot schematics and software has nothing to do with government taking over. It means that hackers everywhere will be able to study and improve said robots and maybe build a version of the factory in some poor place on the other side of the world or maybe on another planet. As far as finding the capital, building the things and running them - that's the responsibility of whoever wants to assume that risk, as always.
  - meanduck 10y ago
    Though this part does suggest some govt strong arming. > be highly encouraged (tax benefits etc) Also note that many (including me) believe that taxes are already non-consensual and extortion by Govts.

runeks 10y ago

No wonder robots rule in Swiss factories when corporations can issue bonds at negative interest rates. When the rate of interest is 7%, paying wages or a salary can be significantly cheaper than buying expensive equipment, because of compound interest. A 10-year bond at 7% interest is 40% more expensive than one at zero percent. The Swiss central bank is creating an environment where corporations have no choice but to automate - it's simply too expensive not to. If they don't do it, their competitors will.

sschueller 10y ago

This is not a surprise, Switzerland also makes a lot of precision robots used in manufacturing. ABB is probably the largest in Switzerland.

joe_the_user 10y ago

The chart of job growth in manufacture shows a series of dips and rises ending with a small dip in 2015 [1]. Call me skeptical but I can't see this supporting the claim that automation is reducing manufacturing employment in Switzerland - especially if the world financial climate is bad, this small dip could even represent postponed hiring. And the big thing is automation is not something that appeared in 2015 - in a factory setting, people have been trying to apply it forever. The simpler description would be "due to extremely high currency, some swiss factories close - and automation continues as usual". Maybe automation is ultimately going to eat all jobs. The claim that automated jobs inherently generate more jobs is another unsupported "received idea" imo. That said, a steady-state scenario would be where each year, a factory is automated more, maintains the same workforce and produces more and better stuff, and the world consumes that larger amount until the whole world has all the stuff they need. That doesn't look like where things are headed but it isn't obviously impossible even if the policies of Trump don't seem like well-thought-out approaches for bringing them about. [1] https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/idKGEW3NsEyI/v2/800x-1.png https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/idKGEW3NsEy... - same article

skookumchuck 10y ago

I prefer to repair rather than replace, but sometimes you get really punished for it. Try to replace the heating element in a dryer, or the circuit board in a furnace. The costs are so high you might as well replace the whole thing. On the other end, my car is designed to make it easy to replace components, and they're cheap, too.

chrismealy 10y ago

Full employment and high wages drive technological progress. When labor is abundant there's little incentive to invest in technology.

Havoc 10y ago

The whole robot revolution thing only sunk in for me when my dad (owner of elec co) mentioned that they got a contract for installing lighting in a factor that is on a timer. Turns out they need the lights off 6 days a week (robots) and 1 day on (humans doing maintenance on robots). That whole concept of they don't even bother lighting it really hit home in terms of yeah really no humans anymore.

dan_quixote 10y ago
It's literally referred to 'lights-out manufacturing' in the automation industry.

Animats 10y ago

There's a business opportunity here in the US. It's now clear that the current administration intends to deport every illegal immigrant they can identify. This will reduce the pool of cheap labor in specific industries. That creates an opportunity for automation. - Fruit picking for difficult crops. Abundant Robots has a good demo system. What they don't have is a technology ready to be deployed. This is an area in which YC could be active. To finance rapid deployment, FSA loans [1] could be used. - Floor care. This should have been automated by now. The Roomba and its friends just aren't good enough at cleaning. What the world needs is a good $3000 industrial strength floor cleaning robot. The technology exists [2] but is too bulky. Here's the Swiss version.[3] And the advanced R&D version, which is not practical yet.[4] This technology is here, almost. Commercial cleaning needs to become one well-paid person and a crew of robots. This is within reach, and now there's an incentive. - Lawn care. "Mow, blow, and go" should have been automated by now. - Commercial dishwashing. Pre-inspection, sorting, vision-guided aiming of pressure wash jets, and post-inspection is needed. A robot at the Baxter level should be able to do this. [1] https://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=GRANTS_LOANS https://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=GRANTS_L... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngDiT6_FA3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngDiT6_FA3A [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtS9oAhEg9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtS9oAhEg9A [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzznru0BDzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzznru0BDzk