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Economic and Social Aspects of
Robotics

Reasons for installing robots
i. to save money, if the cost of a robot over its lifetime is less
than the cost of employing a person (or persons if it
replaces more than one),
ii. to increase the speed of an operation and so increase
iii. production,
iv. to improve product quality through improved consistency,
v. to handle loads too heavy for a person,
vi. to handle dangerous loads (radioactive, explosive, toxic),
vii. to eliminate boring or unpleasant work,
viii. when a person cannot gain access, e.g. in narrow tubes,
ix. when a task needs movements too precise for a person to
make.

Economic costs and benefits of
installing industrial robots
Costs:
1) purchase price,
2) special tooling,
3) installation,
4) staff training,
5) maintenance,
6) power,
7) finance,
8) depreciation.

Savings:
1) labor displaced,
2) quality improvement,
3) increase in throughput (not always
positive),
4) savings on quality of working conditions.

• If these items can be quantified it is
possible to calculate a payback period.
• If a robot is considered as a replacement
for a person it is possible to calculate
• how long the robot must work before it
shows a net saving. This is the
• payback period, and is given by:

• where P is the payback period in years, I is the
initial cost, L is the total annual labour costs
replaced by the robot and E is the annual
maintenance cost.
• The payback period must obviously be less
than the life of the robot, which might be five
or ten years, and in fact payback times of three
years or less are sought.
• Clearly the payback period is low when wages
are high and vice versa, so in Britain where
wages are lower than in some other industrial
countries there has been less of an economic
incentive to install robots and other forms of
automation.

Reliability
• A measure of reliability is uptime: the
percentage of the time for which the robot
is available.
• It is equal to 100% minus the downtime,
which is the percentage of the time for
which the robot is out of service for repair
or maintenance.

• The mean time between failures (MTBF) is
self-explanatory, except that it should be
noted that it refers to the working time, not
calendar time.
• Values of several hundred hours are
typical. The mean time to repair (MTTR) is
the average duration of a repair.
• In some situations any major fault may
cause the robot to be shut down for the rest
of the shift, or until a repair team is
available, and so the MTTR may well be
much longer than the actual repair time.

• These quantities are related:
• For example, if the MTBF is 400 h and the
MTTR is 8 h, the downtime is 2 % and the
uptime is 98 % .

Safety and environmental factors
• As well as the need to guarantee the safety of people in
the workplace, there are several other safety issues in
robotics. Some of those included
here are arguably questions of reliability:
1) safety of human beings where robots are working,
2) safety benefits due to robots,
3) prevention of mechanical damage by robots to other
equipment,
4) prevention of damage to the robot,
5) avoidance of fires and pollution produced by robots,
6) protection of robots from adverse environments.

Protection Of Robots From Adverse
Environments
1) radiation (nuclear applications),
2) extremes of temperature (foundries),
3) abrasive particles (grinding),
4) sparks and molten metal splashes (welding, casting),
5) clogging particles (paint spraying),
6) corrosive chemicals (investment casting),
7) shock and vibration (forging),
8) electrical noise (any factory),
9) water and other liquids (from coolant sprays and
washing),
10) steam (from steam cleaning).

Acceptability of industrial robots
by the workforce
The likelihood of robots being welcomed is increased if the
following conditions are met:
1) they do not lead directly to redundancies, but the
displaced workers are transferred to other work;
2) they are built into a new installation such that there is
no traditional manning level for comparison (in this
case the robot is merely part of a larger piece of
automation being introduced and does not directly
replace anyone);
3) the tasks they take over are unpleasant or dangerous;
4) they result in the workers being retrained to do more
skilled and interesting jobs, e.g. overseeing a robot-
operated process and reprogramming the robots (of
course, the new job may be less interesting than the old
one);

Acceptability of industrial robots
by the workforce
5) they are perceived as enhancing the status
of those who work with them;
6) they create new jobs such as programming
and maintenance;
7) as with any new equipment, the ease of
introduction depends on the state of
industrial relations in the factory.

Employment
• without an immediate loss of jobs,
• their main rationale save labour costs and
• so over the years there must be a loss of
employment, mainly jobs which would have been
created in the absence of automation.
• Some argue that so far the number of robots is tiny
compared with that of a country's workforce, and
also that jobs are created in robot manufacture,
installation and maintenance which compensate to
some extent for the loss of employment in
manufacturing.

Other social issues of robotics
1) Should the use of industrial robots be encouraged or
opposed?
2) Is an increasing use of industrial robots inevitable?
3) When they are introduced, what safeguards should be
established?
4) Is there a real prospect of increased military use of
robotics, and what are the consequences?
5) Do robots for police and security work pose a threat to
freedom?

6) Does robotics have any real potential to
enhance people's lives by, for example,
relieving them of drudgery and dangerous
work?
7) Are domestic robots feasible, and if so are
they desirable?
8) Is robotics likely to enhance or diminish
economic equality, both within and
between nations?

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Economic and Social Aspects of Robotics.pptx

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