I went on a tour of the Cambridge Toyota plant today, where they manufacture the Corolla, Solara, and the Lexus SUV.

I had known going in the field of Mechatronics Engineering that a huge part of commercial robotics is the automotive and aerospace industries. But it was amazing to actually see it — see fifteen welders spring into action and dive on the ghostly shell of a future vehicle. And then, 56 seconds later, see it slide to the next station and a new one load into place. I could have watched them all day.

Unfortunately the tour was fairly rushed. I could have sat there for an hour watching them. I highly recommend this to anyone who’s even remotely interested. It’s a mind-numbing experience to realise that from sheet metal to the final car is just twelve hours of continuous surgery, and that even includes the painting.

It really was amazing.

One of the most eye-opening things for me was to witness the changing role of human personelle in the factory. Where the old system had workers working and checking the work of the prior person, here, the robots did 95% of the labour, and after every step there were meticulous human QA checks that made sure the robotic labour was up to snuff.

And for my Mechatronics homies who did the line-following project: They even had a few automated carts that rolled along following red lines painted on the floor. Most of the robots were either gargantuan fixed beasts or on tracks of some kind. But these coat-rack part carriers seemed to just roll free, following their painted courses.

Mike

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