Project Report on

ROBOTICS IN INDIAN AUTOMOBILE

INDUSTRIES
Submitted by

AKASH SASMAL - 17101103034

ANIK HAZRA - 18101103081
ASIM CHANDRA - 18101103086
BIBEK KUNDU - 18101103092
BISWAJIT PAUL – 18101103082
MOLOY SARKAR – 18101103087
Under the Supervision of
PROF. DR. SUDIP MUKHERJEE

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

A REPORT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT

FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
IN
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

JALPAIGURI GOVERNMENT ENGINEERING COLLEGE

(A Government Autonomous Engineering College under Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University
of Technology (formerly known as WBUT))
JALPAIGURI – 735102

MARCH 2021
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

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 1. Introduction

 WHAT IS AUTOMATION?
Automation is the technology by which a process or procedure is
performed with minimal human
assistance. Automation, or automatic control, is the use of
various control systems for operating equipment such
as machinery, processes in factories, boilers, and heat-
treating ovens, switching on telephone networks, steering, and
stabilization of ships, aircraft, and other applications
and vehicles with minimal or reduced human intervention.
Automation has been achieved by various means
including mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, electronic
devices, and computers, usually in combination. Complicated
systems, such as modern factories, airplanes, and ships typically
use all these combined techniques. The benefit of automation
includes labour savings, savings in electricity costs, savings in
material costs, and improvements to quality, accuracy, and
precision.
The World Bank's World Development Report 2019
shows evidence that the new industries and jobs in the
technology sector outweigh the economic effects of workers being
displaced by automation.

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  WHAT IS SEMI-AUTOMATION?
Semi-Automation is a process or procedure that is performed by
the combined activities of man and machine with both human and
machine steps typically orchestrated by a centralized computer
controller. Many manufacturers choose not to fully automate a
process, and instead implement semi-automation due to the
complexity of the task, or the number of products produced is too
low to justify the investment in full automation. Other processes
may not be fully automated because it may reduce the flexibility
to easily adapt the processes to reflect production needs.

SEMI AUTOMATIC THREE PHASE ASSEMBLY LINE

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  HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF AUTOMATION:-

The term automation was coined in the automobile

industry about 1946 to describe the increased use of automatic
devices and controls in mechanized production lines. The origin
of the word is attributed to D.S. Harder, an engineering manager
at the Ford Motor Company at the time. The term is used widely
in a manufacturing context, but it is also applied outside
manufacturing in connection with a variety of systems in which
there is a significant substitution of mechanical, electrical, or
computerized action for human effort and intelligence
The technology of automation has evolved from the
related field of mechanization, which had its beginnings in
the Industrial Revolution. Mechanization refers to the
replacement of human (or animal) power with mechanical power
of some form. The driving force behind mechanization has been
humankind’s propensity to create tools and mechanical devices.
Some of the important historical developments in mechanization
and automation leading to modern automated systems are
described here.

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Early developments
The first tools made of stone represented prehistoric man’s
attempts to direct his own physical strength under the control
of human intelligence. Thousands of years were undoubtedly
required for the development of simple mechanical devices and
machines such as the wheel, the lever, and the pulley, by which
the power of human muscle could be magnified. The next
extension was the development of powered machines that did not
require human strength to operate. Examples of these machines
include waterwheels, windmills, and simple steam-driven devices.
More than 2,000 years ago the Chinese developed trip-hammers
powered by flowing water and waterwheels. The early Greeks
experimented with simple reaction motors powered by steam.
The mechanical clock, representing a rather complex assembly
with its own built-in power source (a weight), was developed
about 1335 in Europe. Windmills, with mechanisms for
automatically turning the sails, were developed during the Middle
Ages in Europe and the Middle East. During the two centuries
since the introduction of the Watt steam engine, powered engines
and machines have been devised that obtain their energy from
steam, electricity, and chemical, mechanical, and nuclear sources.
The early life of automation begins, then, with the industrial
revolution and industrial machinery between 1790 and 1840.
Then, like now, people feared the impact of automation on their
jobs. In 1837, Charles Babbage began creation of a prototype
machine he called ‘The Analytical Engine’, which was the first
device to earn the name ‘computer’. His friend Ada Lovelace,
meanwhile, created the first ever computer program, which
would have run on the machine. Sadly, Babbage died before his
prototype was complete.

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Principles And Theory Of Automation
The developments described above have provided the three basic
building blocks of automation: (1) a source of power to perform
some action, (2) feedback controls, and (3) machine
programming. Almost without exception, an automated system
will exhibit all these elements.

Power source
An automated system is designed to accomplish some useful
action, and that action requires power. There are many sources of
power available, but the most commonly used power in today’s
automated systems is electricity. Electrical power is the most
versatile, because it can be readily generated from other sources
(e.g., fossil fuel, hydroelectric, solar, and nuclear) and it can be
readily converted into other types of power (e.g., mechanical,
hydraulic, and pneumatic) to perform useful work. In addition,
electrical energy can be stored in high-performance, long-life
batteries.
The actions performed by automated systems are generally of
two types: (1) processing and (2) transfer and positioning. In the
first case, energy is applied to accomplish some processing
operation on some entity. The process may involve the shaping of
metal, the moulding of plastic, the switching of electrical signals in
a communication system, or the processing of data in a
computerized information system. The second type of action—
transfer and positioning—is most readily seen in
automated manufacturing systems designed to perform work on a
product. In these cases, the product must generally be moved
(transferred) from one location to another during the series of
processing steps.
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Feedback controls
Feedback controls are widely used in modern automated systems.
A feedback control system consists of five basic components: (1)
input, (2) process being controlled, (3) output, (4) sensing
elements, and (5) controller and actuating devices. These five
components are illustrated in Figure 1. The term closed-loop
feedback control is often used to describe this kind of system.

 The History of Robotics in the Automotive Industry

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It’s often said industrial robots have made their biggest mark in
the automotive world but it took many decades of refinement for
them to get there. How long has it been since robots got their
start? The most basic ideas originate in Leonardo's time!
The modern idea for the robot made its first appearance in a
play in 1921. In this production, robots were mechanical workers
who helped humans – but they eventually revolted and took over
the world. To say this is an inauspicious beginning would be an
understatement. Still, real-life technology soon began to catch up
with the concept.

 World War II Gives Industrial Automation a Push

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WWII represented a leap forward in technology. U.S. automakers
had high quotas and constantly sought ways to improve output.
The conflict accelerated development of technologies like the first
computer. In 1970, when the first integrated circuit appeared, the
automation race was on. Early industrial robots had no external
sensors. However, they were still able to perform basic tasks like
pick and place. This made automotive factories much safer for
their employees.

 Automotive Automation Booms in the 1970s

Prototype industrial robots were deployed in General Motors
facilities as early as 1961. These first robots mainly performed
spot welding. Their success soon attracted attention from Ford. In
1969, the Stanford Arm was developed. With six degrees of
freedom, it was capable of tasks earlier robots couldn’t perform.
In 1974, it was followed by the Silver Arm from MIT. Using
embedded pressure-sensitive sensors and a microprocessor, this
new arm was far more versatile. It opened the way for a years-
long robot boom with 30% year-on-year growth. By the 1980s,
billions of dollars were spent by companies worldwide to
automate basic tasks in their assembly plants. Although
automation system deployment did dip in the 1990s, innovative
technology has caused it to rebound.

 Automotive Automation Today

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Today, robots are an essential part of making automotive plants
competitive. With interest in building plants throughout China,
the stock of industrial robots in that country is expected to grow
rapidly. In recent years, over half of industrial robot purchases in
North America have been made by automakers. Today’s robots
are far more sophisticated than their predecessors. Many are
semi-autonomous, with machine vision systems to interact within
a changing environment. Some can even work

ADVANTAGES :-
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Advantages commonly attributed to automation in automobile
industry are

1. IMPROVE PRODUCTIVITY- Automation increases the

production rates and increases the total production. It also
improve product quality

2. MATERIAL UTILISATION- Increased process control

makes more efficient use of materials, resulting in less scrap.

3. IMPROVE SAFETY-Worker safety is an important reason

for automating an industrial operation. Automated systems
often remove workers from the workplace, thus
safeguarding them against the hazards of the factory
environment.

4. LESS WORKING HOUR - Mechanization and automation

have played a significant role in production time reduction.
Finally, the time required to process a typical production order
through the factory is generally reduced with automation. It
helps to shorten workweeks for labour and reduces factory
lead times
5. IMPROVE PRODUCT QUALITY - Automation systems
typically perform the manufacturing process with less
variability than human workers, resulting in greater control
and consistency of product quality.

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6. LOWER PRODUCTION COST - Automation can eventually
mean lower production costs for businesses because the process
does not involve recurring costs, except for routine instructions
and repairs. While the initial expense might be hefty, the
investment will prove worthwhile, in the long-run.
7. RELIABILITY AND CONSISTENT OUTPUT- The manual
processing of any task is prone to error, no matter how dedicated
or skilled the person entering the data is. It is also time-
consuming and resource intensive. Automating tasks that
typically require significant manual input can eliminate the
probability of human error. With automation, businesses can
expect precise and consistent outputs. With automated
technologies, what takes a person days of effort can be finished in
a matter of seconds.
8. REDUCE LABOUR CRISIS- Automation can reduce the need
of finding labour for ordinary and repetitive tasks.

LIMITATIONS:-

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Limitations commonly attributed to automation in automobile
industry are
1. LESS VERSATILITY– by having a machine that can perform a
certain task limits to the flexibility and variety of tasks that an
employee could do.
2. MORE POLLUTION – different types of machines operate
using motor which may require gases or chemicals in order to
operate. This can cause an increase in pollution in the workplace.
3. LARGE INITIAL INVESTMENT – automated machines can
be one of the most costly operating costs for a company. With
automated machines running anywhere between thousands and
millions of dollars depending on the type and degree of
automation.
4. INCREASE UNEMPLOYMENT – by increasing the amount of
automation, there are less employees required causing high
unemployment rates.
5. UNPREDICTABLE COSTS – there can be several
unpredictable costs that may exceed the actual cost saved by the
automation itself. Some of these costs could include research and
development costs of automating a process, preventative
maintenance costs, and the cost of training employees to operate
automated machines.
6. MAINTENANCE - Automated machines require lots of upgrades
and maintenance during operation like system upgrades, broken
electronics etc.
7. DEPENDENCY ON TECHNOLOGY - Implementing most
automation requires some degree of technical assistance

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 “Robotics in Indian Automobile Industries”
India became the fourth largest auto market in 2019 displacing
Germany with about 3.99 million units sold in the passenger and
commercial vehicles categories. India is expected to displace
Japan as the third largest auto market by 2021.
This could not be possible if robotics was not introduced to the
different automobile companies in India.
As the demand in car units increased, the production time needed
to be lesser that is why so many companies are trying to bring
more robots and semi-robots into production work.
This does affect the human resource requirements but improved
the production rate, profit and also perfection of the products.

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Following are some of the leading automobile companies that
have been using these advanced robots in their manufacturing
unit.
 TATA

 MARUTI SUZUKI

 HYUNDAI

A Tata group company, TAL Manufacturing Solutions, unveiled

India's first ever robot called 'BRABO'. In the Make in India week
that took place in the year 2016. The development cost, as
reported, is Rs. 10 crore.

Brief details of Tata Tal Brabo:

• The robot is a Tata Motors innovation.

• It has been developed in-house by a team of six engineers led by
Anil Bhingurde , COO of TAL Manufacturing Solutions.
• The development cost of the robot is reported to be about Rs 10
crore.
• The designing has been done at TAL, the styling at Tata Elxi, and
the manufacturing of some parts at Tata AutoComp.
• Tata Capital, a housing finance company, provided the finance.
• The robot will be developed for micro, small and medium
enterprises.

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• The robot will be easy to install, use, program and maintain.
• Tata Brabo comes with a low-cost power transmission system.
• The enterprises will then use the robots for their manufacturing
purposes.
• It has been reported that Brabo will be priced at Rs 300,000 for
a payload of 2 kilograms, and Rs. 600,000 for a payload of 10
kilograms.
• The main advantage of Tata is that the company will control the
localised manufacturing of the robot and it can price the robots
lower than the foreign players.
• The idea behind the making of the robot is to drive
mechanisation in the Indian markets by offering cheap and cost-
effective solutions.
• It has also been reported that by manufacturing robots, TAL
Manufacturing doesn't intend to compete with the global robot
manufacturing companies but plans to target the small initiatives
in the Indian markets with affordable solutions.
• With the launch of Brabo, from the next year, the demand of
robots in the Indian market is expected to rise to 5,000 from
1,000, according to the International Federation of Robotics.

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TAL BRABO ROBOT ( TATA MOTORS)

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 MARUTI SUZUKI

Signalling the rising tide of automation in India, Maruti Suzuki

India Ltd now has at least one robot for every four workers
employed at its Manesar and Gurgaon car factories, the country’s
largest.

 Maruti Suzuki has one robot for every 4 factory workers at

its Manesar and Gurgaon car plants, signalling growing
automation in India's manufacturing sector.

 For 16 hours every day, a serpentine production line coiled

inside a 600-acre facility in Manesar shapes and slots steel,
rubber, and plastic into shiny new Maruti Suzuki cars.

 The largest facility of India’s biggest carmaker, some 55

kilometres away from New Delhi, works at a prodigious
pace. Amid a somewhat dystopian industrial township of
glass-fronted buildings, boxy manufacturing units and dusty
sidewalks, this sprawling factory typically spits out 3,100
cars in 960 minutes daily. The rate of over three vehicles
every minute helps Maruti Suzuki, majority owned by
Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp., maintain its control over 47% of
India’s passenger car market.

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 According to c, robots are deployed largely in the weld shop,
the paint shop and the press shop, where automobile car
bodies are shaped. The three are fully automated. Manual
work is now done mostly in car assembly.

 India’s largest carmaker is now buying C-series robots,

which are smaller in size, take up less space and are 15 per
cent faster than their predecessors. Among the suppliers of
the robots is the Japanese company Fanuc Robotics. For the
company’s upcoming car, the new generation Dzire, as many
as 104 C-Series high-speed robots are being used for
welding.

 More than 2,000 robots work seamlessly at the weld shop in

Maruti’s Manesar facility. On one particular car at a
particular time, at least 12 robots could be at work, the
company said in a presentation to reporters during a visit to
the Manesar plant on Friday. There are around 160 robots in
the body paint shop and 65 in the bumper paint shop.

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Maruti’s automated welding floor at its Manesar plant

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 HYUNDAI

 The Hyundai plant in Sriperumbudur in suburban Chennai

doesn’t conform to the old-fashioned image of a factory with
greasy floors and deafening noise.

 A few hundred kilometres away, Honda's two-wheeler plant,

near Narsapura, in the outskirts of Bengaluru, also uses
robots to improve efficiencies. Indeed, most automakers
who have set up manufacturing plants in India are resorting
to automation to boost their productivity.

 At Hyundai's Sriperumbudur factory, where 580 robots are

in use, the defect ratio has dropped from five per cent to less
than two. This plant is in the Top 5 in the Qualitivity charts
(Quality + Productivity) amongst Hyundai Motor Group’s
(HMG) 32 plants worldwide. It was also HMG’s Number 1
performing overseas plant and the No 1 Safety Plant in 2017.

 Says S Ganesh Mani, vice president, production, Hyundai

Motor India Ltd, “Our strategy is to use automation to
minimise and eliminate dirty, dull and dangerous jobs and to
improve overall efficiencies.”

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 Hyundai's Sriperumbudur factory

 Robots are coming for India’s shop floors , How 

will  it look 10 years from now?

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 While India may have missed the manufacturing bus of the
1980s and 1990s, the bus has now become more advanced.
And the edge lies in industrial IoT,  robotics,  AI  and 3D  printing.
Three years ago, TAL Manufacturing Solutions Ltd, a unit of Tata
Motors Ltd, showcased a robot called BRABO at the “Make in
India" week in Mumbai. Short for “Bravo Robot", BRABO was
touted by the company as the first “Made in India" industrial
robot, and is designed to lift loads of up to 10 kilograms.

Mahindra and Mahindra LTd already has a “robotic weld line" at

its factory in Nashik, which now caters to many of its products
including the Marazzo and the XUV300. Tata Motors, too, uses
robots in its Pune factory, while Godrej and Welspun run their
shop floors with the help of an Intelligent Plant Framework,
which enables tracking of machinery and productivity on the floor
in real time.

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd has numerous robots employed at its

Manesar and Gurugram car factories, with more than 2,000
robots working at the weld shop in its Manesar facility alone.
Manjushree Technopack Ltd’s Bidadi (in Bengaluru)
manufacturing plant also has more than a dozen of its packaging
machines connected to a network, providing monthly updates on
maintenance issues.Automation, of course, is no stranger to shop
floors. Many factories all over the world and India have been
using computer numerical control (CNC) machines for years.
These machines allow operators to feed a program of instructions
directly into a mini-computer via a small board, similar to a
traditional keyboard. After loading the required tools in the
machine, the rest is done automatically by the CNC machines,
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which use these instructions to control machinery such as the
grinder, milling machine, and lathe. But next-gen automation is
likely to be vastly different on one score: it will either make
humans redundant or vastly alter the necessary skill set that is
required to hold on to one’s spot on the shop floor. A human-
machine interface, or HMI, may eventually make the good old CNC
machine voice-activated, for example, allowing an operator to just
speak instructions.These oncoming changes will leave long-
lasting impacts on India’s labour force, particularly in some
sectors—automotive, textile, and banking and financial services,
apart from information technology—which have become far more
attuned to global shifts due to the nature of modern supply
chains. The “smart factory" will, in all likelihood, change the
popular conception of what a shop floor looks like.

AN ARMY OF ROBOTS:
The number of robots in use worldwide multiplied threefold over
the past two decades to 2.25 million, according to a June 2019
report by Oxford Economics. Trends suggest the global stock of
robots will multiply even faster in the next 20 years, reaching as
many as 20 million by 2030—with 14 million in China alone, the
report adds.India is way behind at the moment. But things can
change very quickly. The automotive industry, which is currently
racked by a slowdown, is a great example. In the face of
stagnation, firms that had begun to ramp up their robot density
(robots per 10,000 workers) in the mid-2000s have now merely
chosen not to rehire a bulk of the short-term, rotational, low-
skilled contract workforce. According to a 22 January 2019 report
by the International Federation of Robotics, India’s automotive

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sector was the main customer for industrial robots, accounting
for as much as 62% of the total supply.

“On average, each newly installed robot displaces 1.6

manufacturing workers," the report says. Despite these rapid
changes, industry players like Harshvendra Soin, chief people
officer at Tech Mahindra, say: “We believe the future will be more
human than we think." However, some factories are now
beginning to acquire the capability for “lights out" production—
meaning, they can operate without the presence of human
workers. In fact, Japanese robotics firm FANUC, which is
considered to be the poster boy for such factories, has been
operating a “lights out" factory with robots since 2001.

Lights out automotive factory

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UNIQUE QUANDRY:
India is in a unique quandary. While the country needs to find
jobs for its booming population, the globally competitive
opportunities are almost entirely in smart manufacturing, most of
which require less human hands per unit of output. “The
conventional ways of doing incremental business will no longer
suffice. India needs to push its people to adopt disruptive ways of
doing business," said Ashutosh Sharma, secretary, Department of
Science and Technology at the 4th Confederation of Indian
Industries Smart Manufacturing Summit, held on 26 October 2018
in Delhi.

Technological unemployment

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A RENEWED OPPORTUNITY:
While India may have missed the manufacturing bus of the 1980s
and 90s, which powered China’s growth, the bus has now become
more advanced. And the competitive edge lies in artificial 
intelligence (AI), industrial internet of things (IoT), wearables,
robotics and additive manufacturing (better known as 3D
printing), which are all set to fundamentally transform global
production.
In any case, automation on the shop floor is now being taken to
new levels. Machines develop faults like parts getting worn out or
equipment not getting calibrated properly. An operator could,
thus, waste a lot of time trying to locate the origin of the problem.
It’s here that automation is being combined with AI and IoT on
the shop floor to resolve such issues.
AI, for instance, can be integrated with CNC machines to enable
self-diagnosis. Thus, when a fault develops, it will be detected and
the software will try and solve the problem. Apart from using the
data that is collected thus for diagnostics, a more advanced AI
system could analyze that data and alter the settings of the
machine to optimize a prototype being manufactured.
According to a 10 May blog by Craig Lyjak, EY Global Smart
Factory leader, the smart factory is no longer a futuristic vision. It
is the heart of the broader Industry 4.0, or the Fourth Industrial
Revolution, which refers to the gradual combination of traditional
manufacturing and industrial practices with digital technologies.
The most prominent of these technologies, according to Lyjak,
include computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided
engineering (CAE) software, cloud computing, IoT, advanced
sensor technologies, 3D printing, industrial robotics, data

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analytics, AI and machine learning (ML), and enhanced machine-
to-machine (M2M) communications.
These technologies are already showing impressive results both
globally and in India. In 2016, The Times of India reported that
the country’s first “self-aware" factory was being set up in
Bengaluru at the Indian Institute of Science’s Centre for Product
Design and Manufacturing with seed funding from the Boeing Co.
The factory is enabling data to be continuously collected and
monitored, from both sensor-fitted machines and digitally
connected wearables in order to provide real-time insights about
every movement and process taking place on the factory floor.
The factory remains a “work in progress".
On its part, German auto-component maker Bosch’s Bidadi plant
has cobots, or collaborative robots, working alongside humans.
GE’s Chakan (in Pune) factory’s enterprise resource planning
(ERP) system is linked to the manufacturing execution system
(MES). Equipment efficiency is monitored in real time to decide
production schedules like availability of forks or lifts, raw
material trucks, workers and machines while sensors (read IoT)
send warnings on possible breakdowns.

DIGITAL FACTORIES:
While the Indian automobile industry is unquestionably at the
vanguard of the oncoming change, other companies are not
entirely untouched. Mondelez India describes its Sri City (in
Andhra Pradesh) unit as an “integrated digital factory", one which
can pack 6,300 chocolate bars a minute, while Jaipur Watch Co.
has added a new collection of stainless steel watches that were 3D
printed.

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Lyjak cites the example of Microsoft Dynamics’ integration with
smart factory processes and technologies as a case in point.
Microsoft Dynamics’ Remote Assist application, for instance,
combines Microsoft HoloLens (a self-contained, holographic
computer) with mixed reality, video calling, annotations, and file
sharing to enable experts to remotely troubleshoot complex
problems and help technicians. This saves time, reduces travel
costs and improves operational efficiency on the shop floor.

Further, AI is used to optimize the multi-robot fulfilment system

in Amazon warehouses. The average cost for a spot welding robot,
according to the report, is projected to decrease by 22% by 2025,
and robots-as-a-service models are beginning to appear.Although
bringing AI onto the shop floor would require a massive capital
investment, the return on investment (ROI) is higher, according to
SaaSnic Technologies. AI and ML, for instance, can test numerous
demand forecasting models with precision, while automatically
adjusting to different variables such as new product
introductions, supply chain disruptions or sudden changes in
demand. Using AI systems, every single part of a product can be
tracked from when it’s first manufactured to when it is assembled
and shipped to the customer.

Walmart, for instance, cut its physical inventory from one month
to 24 hours by using drones that fly through the warehouse, scan
products, and check for misplaced items. Using algorithms that
learn from experience to optimize logistics, BMW tracks a part
from the point it was manufactured to when the vehicle is sold—
from all of its assembly facilities across the world. In finance
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operations, AI can close operations and automate monthly,
quarterly and year-end processes. Using ML, bots can learn from
human inputs to make better judgments and adapt to the
behaviour patterns of accounting professionals.

digital automotive manufacturing

THE FUTURE OFFICE:

Smart robots also assist shop floor operations indirectly by
increasing employee satisfaction and appealing to a millennial
mindset. A couple of months ago, for instance, Indian IT services
provider Tech Mahindra introduced a Human Resource (HR)
humanoid at its Noida Special Economic Zone Campus in Uttar
Pradesh. Christened K2, this was the second HR humanoid (a
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robot that resembles a human) from the Mahindra Group
company—the first was launched at its Hyderabad campus in
May.

K2 can address HR-related employee queries and even handle

personal requests for actions like providing payslips, tax forms,
etc. With the help of AI, K2 can start a conversation without any
need for wake-up commands. It can even converse with
differently-abled employees by responding to queries with a text
display along with speech. Tech Mahindra now plans to deploy
the next humanoid at its Pune campus.

Despite the immense potential benefits of enhancing ERP systems

with AI, there are risks with regard to sharing of sensitive data
and regulations that need to be considered, such as the European
Union general data protection regulation (GDPR), besides the loss
of jobs to automation and robots. That said, the benefits may
outweigh the risks if governments devise sensible privacy
regulations, and revamp labour policies to factor in the impact of
these new technologies on the workforce.

As an example, Tech Mahindra, which has already implemented

an AI-based facial recognition (which typically raises privacy
invasion concerns) system to register the attendance of
employees, claims it has “drastically reduced the time spent by an
associate in updating the timesheet". The company also has Talex
—an AI-driven marketplace of talent that maps skills of the
existing talent pool.
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But the increasingly common use of AI and robotics in the Indian
context may lie inside the e-commerce package. Gurugram-based
AI-powered robotics firm GreyOrange’s Butler, for example, is an
autonomous robot that uses goods-to-person technology for
inventory storage and order picking. It populates the many
warehouses that have come up across the country in order to fuel
the e-commerce boom. Butler runs on a software platform that
uses AI algorithms and ML, which optimize path planning,
maximize storage, and accelerate order fulfilment.

LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST:

The final piece of the puzzle is the ability to hire these intelligent
machines on contract, like workers. As a precursor for what may
become commonplace soon, US-based Hirebotics allows firms to
hire cloud-connected robots. The hourly wage starts at $15 per
hour and they can work a minimum of 80 hours a week—and,
they neither tire nor need bathroom breaks. Of course, companies
have to give Hirebotics a 30-day written notice if they fire any
robot. What these robot work contracts show is this: the future is
already here.

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