Seat has given a glimpse into the fascinating role its dancing robots play to ensure a new car body is manufactured to precision every 68 seconds.
The Spanish car giant employs more than 7,000 members of staff at its Martorell production facility near Barcelona.
But at the centre of the state-of-the-art factory are 2,000 robots which harmoniously assemble the bodywork for models such as the Ibiza and Leon.
This multi-coloured mechanical workforce move vertically, horizontally on rails and can perform 720º pirouettes.
They vary from one to seven metres in length, handle weights of up to 700kg and work on up to 2,300 parts daily – all in perfect synchronicity.
The robots are part of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, and they help relieve human colleagues of repetitive work and heavy lifting.
But they are brain as much as brawn and perform increasing sophisticated functions, including welding, bolting, applying adhesives and measuring possible body deviations of up to two-tenths of a millimetre with their measuring sensors.
And while the robots work, a team of 390 people keep an eye on the needs of the facilities, ensuring the robots are operating correctly.
Seat has now released a video showcasing the robots in action as they ‘dance’ to classical music.
The Martorell factory, which is the size of 400 football fields, is celebrating its 25th birthday this year – with almost 10 million vehicles rolling off the production line over the past quarter-of-a-century.
In 2017, SEAT achieved worldwide sales of nearly 470,000 vehicles. Martorell is one of the biggest car production facilities in Europe.
While car sales in the UK have fallen significantly this year, Seat is one of the few firms to buck the trend – with registrations up 14 per cent in 2018.
So… let’s get to the good stuff. Will AI take over? Will these dancing robots go beserk after building one too many vehicles? Or worse, get mad and then use their car designs to run us all over?
Royal astronomer Sir Martin Rees certainly thinks so. He believes within a few centuries machines will completely replace humanity.
He also predicts artificial intelligence to last billions of years after humans have become extinct.
Sir Martin believes our time on Earth is no more than a brief transitional phase between primordial organic life and the period of AI, which he calls a ‘post-human’ future.
He told The Conversation:
My guess is that if we do detect an alien intelligence, it will be nothing like us. It will be some sort of electronic entity.
The period of time occupied by organic intelligence is just a thin sliver between early life and the long era of the machines.
Because such civilisations would develop at different rates, it’s extremely unlikely that we will find intelligent life at the same stage of development as us.
He added:
More likely, that life will still be either far simpler, or an already fully electronic intelligence.
The journey times are just too great for mortal minds and bodies.
If you’re immortal, however, these distances become far less daunting.
That journey will be made by robots, not us.
See you on the other side guys!
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