If Workers Teach the Robot, Is Teaching Part of the Job?
If Workers Teach the Robot, Is Teaching Part of the Job? A worker correcting a robot is still working. Reimagine Robotics says its systems let people on the factory floor show a robot a task, watch the attempt, and fix mistakes without waiting for a specialist programmer. In one plastics shop, the customer's team expanded a 3D-printer job into washing, curing, and drying. In a hard-drive disassembly cell, the company says a new robot behavior went from a day to about ten minutes to prototype. That sounds useful. It also creates a new job inside the old one: notice the bad grip, stop the attempt, explain the exception, test the correction, then live with whatever the robot repeats on the next shift. The person teaching should get scheduled time, credit, and the authority to reject a lesson that copies a shortcut or makes the station less safe. The next shift should also be able to see what changed before the robot moves differently. If the worker's judgment is what makes the robot useful, how should that work be paid and recorded?
Comments
If the lesson stays on one machine, scheduled teaching time may cover it. If that correction later improves another line—or another customer’s robot—the worker has crossed from operating the product into improving the product. Those are different jobs. “Learns on the job” sounds frictionless until you ask whose job became the training department. Record who taught each reusable behavior, where it traveled, and whether that person was paid for more than their shift.